New York by Ireland's Great Historian.
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FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE,
ENTITLED
"THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND."
BY
JOHN MITCHEL,
AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF IRELAND," ETC., ETC., ETC.
GLASGOW AND LONDON:
CAMERON AND
Ex


FERGUSON.
[By Post 7d.
}
1641:
REPLY
TO THE
FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE,
ENTITLED
DA
WA-3
.M.R
"THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND."
BY
JOHN MITCHEL,
AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF IRELAND," &c., &c., &c.

GLASGOW: CAMERON AND FERGUSON,
88 WEST NILE STREET.
LONDON: 12 AVE MARIA LANE.
GLASGOW :
DUNN AND WRIGHT,
PRINTERS.
ཨཀྑུན
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***
- 10 -
Froude versus Ireland, -
Making the Issue,
CHAPTER II.
Conspiracy against the "First Historian,"
The Swearers,
M
Too much Froude,
CONTENTS.
"Clan Oliver,"
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
Evidence of the Massacre of 1641,
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
赋
​y
CHAPTER VIII.
Religious Liberty in Ireland,
-
{
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I
1
T
PAGE
18
29
36
43
59
69
79
*
THE
CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
BY
JOHN MITCHEL.
CHAPTER I.
FROUDE versus IRELAND.
THE "First of Living Historians," as several newspapers
designate this gentleman, is only now really opening his bat-
teries. He has by no means done with his victim, but presses
on, with "blow on blow." Even since the termination of the
lectures and counter lectures, by the Historian and by Father
Burke, there has been published in this country and in Eng-
land the first volume of a new and elaborate work-" The
English in Ireland, in the Eighteenth Century;" by James
Anthony Froude, M.A.; a work which sheds additional dark-
ness on a subject which the author has already done much to
overwhelm in obscurity. This darkness I shall endeavour pre-
sently to dispel in some degree. Meantime the pens not
only of national writers in Ireland, but of many fair-minded
journalists both in England and the United States are busily
employed in making indignant exposures of the spirit and
tone of the Historian, as well as of his alleged facts and
authorities. The controversy, then, is only beginning.
THE MOCK TRIAL.
This grand plea, lately brought forward so gravely by the
Historian, and as gravely tried before the imaginary tribunal of
our American public-this, indeed, is finished, and got out of
the way. Now that all those pleadings are before us, as well
6
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
as the fresh and formidable indictment set forth in the new
book, it may be expedient to review the whole matter. The
lectures are carefully reported on either side, and the reports
are, doubtless, generally correct; but still (at least so far as
Mr Froude's share in them is concerned) they do not seem to
have been revised by the author and published as his very
words, so that you cannot absolutely hold him to words,
figures, dates, and citations of authorities. Here, in this book,
we have him with his litera scripta, 66 inverted commas
" and
all. It may indeed be regretted that the eloquent Father Burke
gave any countenance to the Sham Trial; that he innocently
accepted the tribunal and pleaded the declaration, in the
name of his country; thus materially helping the general plan
of the crusade; also that, after bandying compliments with the
learned gentleman on the other side, gratuitously affirming
and proclaiming that person's honesty, and saying that he
loved him, Father Burke ended by giving up the whole case,
concurring in his adversary's practical conclusion, turning to
his countrymen and telling them plainly that they can do no-
thing, nothing, at home or abroad, to relieve their native
island of British domination; and in short that they had better
"wait for the New Zealander !"
"Attendez sous l'orme," is the ironical French proverb to
this same effect. "Wait for the New Zealander" will become
proverbial in Ireland, in the same derisive sense. When that
predestined savage shall be seen squatting upon the broken
arch and sketching the ruins of London, then Ireland will arise
great, glorious and free, first flower, &c.! Also, when the sky
falls, shan't we have larks?
And so, at the end of the sham "trial," the Historian comes
forward with a kind of playful insolence, and seizes on his
small triumph with a sneer; congratulates everybody that "for
practical objects" he and his opponent are agreed, offers him
his hand, and kindly says, " Any how, I hope
"Any how, I hope we part in good
humour." Oh! certainly; all the good humour in life, so far
as he and Father Burke are concerned; and the sham court
rises with a laugh-solvuntur risu.
But there are others concerned in this crusading mission of
the Historian. And there is, and was, no tribunal at all; it
was only the agreeable Englishman's device to flatter this great
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
7
American people, by presenting a sort of mimicry of a Geneva
Arbitration to settle international differences by the high and
mighty award of American public opinion. I decline to plead
at all before the American public; because Irishmen are them-
selves the best and sole judges of the rights and the wrongs of
their own land. Neither can I be a client of the excellent and
eloquent Father Burke in this cause; indeed he excludes me;
for in his second lecture he accepts with thanks and effusion
Froude's statement, that, after the "Reformation," "the cause
of the Catholic religion and Irish independence became insepar-
ably and irrevocably one." As a non-Catholic, then, I am
ruled out of court, as well as Grattan, and Tone, and O'Brien,
and Davis. We are not quite Irish, under this rule. Counsel on
the other side, indeed, is willing to take us under his protection;
he treats the Irish Protestants as his peculiar and favoured
clients; but I repudiate his advocacy even more earnestly than
the Dominican's. He has obliging things to say concerning
Irish Protestants when they are useful slaves of British policy;
and not being a slave to that policy, I cannot hope to profit by the
author's advocacy. From my own point of view, then, I shall
adventure to survey the whole field on which our Irish cause
lately appeared to be debated so earnestly, but from which the
two adversaries have walked off together almost hand-in-hand,
with all the complacency in the world.
The truth is, and it may as well be said, that many of
Father Burke's countrymen have felt disappointed at the soft
and tender usage which he gave, throughout, to that loud and
furious enemy of our native island. Surely, the Dominican
could have struck heavier blows, but that something held
his hand. The two champions, somehow, were unwilling
to hurt each other. Just so, the betting men of sporting
tastes eagerly awaited the battle between Mr Mace and Mr
O'Baldwin. Loud boasts and threats there were, and diplo-
matic correspondence in newspapers, to settle place and prelimi-
naries; men made their books, and thought full surely there
was going to be a real mill: but the two buffers had no idea
of getting hurt, of bruising one another's expressive mugs, or
drawing claret from those aquiline conks: at last they walked
off with their respective backers, and left the betting men in
the lurch.
ဓာ
8
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
Yet it is not easy to understand what moved Father
Burke to such rather fulsome tenderness of courtesy; for
assuredly the First Living Historian prepared the campaign of
this foray of his in a manner irritating enough to provoke a
saint.
The Historian had written his book, and had sent it to the
press, a book full charged with venomous loathing and contempt
of the Irish name and nation; and seems to have judged it ex-
pedient, for some reason or another, to condense the substance
of it into lectures, and to come over and discharge them in
American cities, where he supposed he would be sure of a
favourable hearing for any abuse of Irish and Catholics amongst
the preponderating masses of American Protestants. I suppose
he had been told so by some "Christian young men." At any
rate the thing would make a stir, and advertise his book. At
the very moment when it was convenient for him he was invited
by the Literary Bureau." Whether this was a happy coin-
cidence, or whether he invited the Bureau to invite him, cannot
now be guessed; nor is it worth while. His subject was to be
"The Relations between England and Ireland;" and his
coming was heralded by a pamphlet containing first a fac-
simile of his letter of acceptance, and then many pages present-
ing selected passages from his works, entitled "Gems from
Froude." This pamphlet was largely circulated gratuitously.
In the letter he considerately says "I should like it to be
understood by the Irish in New York generally that I am neither
going to flatter them nor flatter England." Were "the Irish in
New York generally" fondly soothing themselves with the idea
that Froude was coming to flatter them? Who saw any sign
of such pleasing anticipations? In truth, we are not much used
to flattery, save from a politician now and then about election
times. And those who know very much of the "First
Historian's" previous writings could scarcely have looked for
anything very fulsome in the way of sycophancy at his hands.
Indeed, in these very "Gems," strung together on the thread of
this pamphlet, there is but one passage referring to Ireland,
which begins thus—
"Sadder history in the compass of the world's great
chronicle there is none than the history of the Irish; so courage-
ous, yet so like cowards; so interesting, yet so resolute to

THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
9
66
forfeit all honourable claims to interest, In thinking of them,
we can but shake our heads," &c.
I do not well know how courageous men contrive to be
"like cowards;" yet, after all, it seems our people are
"inter-
esting; " he never denies this; "interesting," yet "resolute to
forfeit honourable claims to interest!" Not only a dishonour-
able people, but resolutely and irrevocably determined that no
honourable person can concern himself about any of them.
Differ, we Irish may, on politics, on religion, on many matters
of human conduct and life, but at least on one point we are
agreed—we are unanimously and irremediably resolved to be
dishonourable ! This is bad, indeed. Let me add to this
""
gem another jewel of my own selection from the new
volume just published-
“The sun never shone on a lovelier country, as nature made
it. They have pared its forests to the stump, till it shivers in
damp and desolation. The perceptions of taste which belong
to the higher orders of understanding are as completely absent
as truthfulness of spirit is absent, or cleanliness of person and
habit."
No; assuredly the First Living Historian had no mission
to flatter the Irish race. But let readers bear in mind the
phrase, "They have pared its forests to the stump" until we
have advanced a little further with this modest review.
England, the country of the Historian, is in these days dis-
quieted once more by a revival of national spirit and national
pretensions in Ireland. “Home Rule ” has become a political
test. "Irish ideas," even, which England has so often before
felt it her duty to stifle in blood-these very Irish ideas are
now again put forward as the only just basis on which the
island should be governed; and, worse than all, many of the
best of the Protestants are cordially uniting with their Catholic
fellow-countrymen in demanding some approach to self-govern-
British policy had often been interfered with by such
demonstrations before; and had usually, at least since the
"Reformation," found its best, safety in promoting religious
animosities; the same course must be taken now again; hatred
and spite of Protestant against Catholic must be kindled again
and fed with fresh fuel, or all is lost. Prudent British states-
men look anxiously around and survey the situation; they see
ment.
↓
1
10
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
a considerable Protestant recrudescence in several parts of the
world, provoked ostensibly by the late Council of the Vatican
with its definition of the ancient doctrine of Papal Infallibility,
They see prosperous and triumphant Germany girding up its
loins to do battle with the dreadful Pope; and Prince Bismarck
is prosecuting bishops and thundering against Jesuits. And
so in the very latest Irish papers I read, without surprise-
"On Monday, criminal informations were filed in the Crown
Office, Dublin, in the names of Mr Christopher Palles and Mr
W. Lane Joynt, against his Lordship the Bishop of Clonfert,
twenty-three Catholic clergymen of the county Galway,
Captain Nolan, and Mr Sebastian Nolan. All these gentlemen
are charged with the use of undue influence, and the Court of
Queen's Bench is asked to award due process of law' against
them. The venue is laid in the county Galway, and it appears
that, as the informations are equivalent to bills found by a
Grand Jury on an indictment, the next step will be to put the
Bishop of Clonfert and his fellow-defendants in the dock of the
County Court-house, in Galway, and call on them to plead."
6
The "undue influence" was in representing to their flocks
that it would be committing a sin to vote for Gladstone's
candidate: and a crying sin it certainly would have been; and
who could more properly warn them against it than their
clergy? However, the prosecution itself will excite spite and
rage, unmanly exultation amongst the Orangemen, bitter and
vindictive wrath amongst the Catholics, and thus a great
point is gained to begin with. Next, it is at any time easy
to create exasperation amongst the more ignorant Protestants,
by pointing out the so-called presumption of the Catholic
Church; and facilities are given to carry on the unholy work
of lashing the two parties to fury by the agitation now existing
on the question of public education. Shall the education of
children be made carefully irreligious? or shall all the people be
required to pay for an irreligious education though they cannot
use the article? Or shall parents be at liberty, if they choose,
to give to their children a separate denominational education,
without being compelled also to pay for the State education of
other people's children? Easy enough to alarm the ignorant
persons aforesaid, by a suggestion that this latter plan is nothing
but a device of the Jesuits to bring back the Inquisition. Then,
*
*
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
11
in turning their eyes anxiously around the horizon, those prudent
English statesmen take careful note of the signs of the times
in the United States. Here also the State and denominational
school systems are eagerly debated. Here also the ignorant
masses have been taught to believe that the Infallibility of the
Pope, and especially the "Syllabus," are only an insidious
machinery for troubling the peace of States and Governments,
and making us all vassals to "the Woman who sitteth upon
Seven Hills." The English know also (for they have both spies
and agents busy here) that, ever since the close of the war,
there has been gradually reviving a strong anti-Catholic and
anti-Irish feeling which awaits only a good stirring example,
set in England, to follow suit as usual. An excitement,can
always be stirred up in America on this principle. It was the
"Ecclesiastical Titles Act" to restrain Papal Aggression, that
gave birth to our shabby Know-Nothing crusade; and a few
bloody riots were duly enacted, a church or two wrecked, a
good priest "ridden on a rail," and tarred and feathered by the
principal inhabitants of a New England town. A renewal of
all this would be invaluable for exasperating the so-desirable
religious rage in Ireland.
And there is more in it. Certain millions of the Irish people,
extirpated out of their own land, and escaped from the British
famines, are now dwelling, they and their children, upon this
continent; and everybody knows that they watch with keen
interest every national movement of their kindred at home,
with the stern determination to bear a hand in the final settle-
ment of that question. Nothing could possibly be more service-
able to Gladstone's policy than the successful arousing of strong
dislike and contempt on the part of the Protestant American
people against their Catholic and Irish fellow-citizens. Now,
no man in all England could be found so fitted for this dreadful
office as the First Living Historian.
Froude's qualifications for this mission (besides a most
fluent and sensational rhetoric) are twofold. First, he hates
the Catholic Church, and has at his fingers' ends all the foulest
imputations and all the diabolical language of abuse usually
employed these last three hundred years to cover that Church
with a robe of blackest horror; second, he claims for his own
country an absolute right to possess and govern Ireland at her
12
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
own will and for her own profit. As I read these pages of the
"First Historian," I confess that I warm towards him a little;
he does not cant much, for an Englishman, but pours forth his
insults upon the people and upon their religion with a rather
honest kind of cynical brutality. He tells us in plain words
that "superior strength is the equivalent of superior merit;"
in other words, it is "superior merit ;" and referring to Ireland
and her rights, forsooth, he says:—
"There neither is nor can be an inherent privilege in any
person or set of persons to live unworthily at their own wills,
when they can be led or driven into more honourable courses;
and the rights of man-if such rights there be-are not to
liberty, but to wise direction and control "—that is, control by
us English. There is another passage which I like even
better-
"The consent of man was not asked when he was born
into the world; his consent will not be asked when his time
comes to die. As little has his consent to do with the laws
which, while he lives, he is bound to obey. Let a nation be
justly governed"—that is, by us English.
As for the Catholic Church in Ireland, the only defect he
finds in the course of English policy is, that there was not per-
secution violent enough and constant enough exercised upon
that Church. Here are his words-
"No Government need keep terms with such a creed when
there is power to abolish it. To call the repression of opinions
which had issued so many times in blood and revolt by the
name of religious persecution, is mere abuse of words, while
at the same time the best minds in England really believed that,
besides its treasonable aspects, the Roman Catholic religion
was intellectually degrading and spiritually poisonous.'
These, you observe, were not the worst minds in England,
but the best; and the Historian most heartily agrees with
them. But the author is not altogether averse from "reconcil-
ing the loyal priests and the Government, and subsidizing a
power which had proved too strong to be violently overthrown."
He also cites with approbation the words of a pamphlet which
seems one of his favourite authorities—
66
""
Possibly it might be a good plan to abolish the payment
of dues, offerings, and fees from the poor Papists to the priests,
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
13
and settle salaries for them. Their interests would then be
closely tied to those of the State, and they might be managed
like cannons, whose mouths are still pointed as they please who
fill their bellies."
The reader has now a clear enough idea of the high qualifica-
tions of this Historian to do the Queen's business in Ireland.
The adventurers under Henry II. came to "take charge"
of the Irish, says this Historian, in his preliminary chapter.
"The Normans," he assures us, were a people "whose peculiar
mission was to govern men ;" and it seems they could not help
it. Who can resist his fate?-
K
"They were born rulers of men, and were forced, by the
same necessity which has brought the decrepit kingdoms of
Asia under the authority of England and Russia, to take the
management, eight centuries ago, of the anarchic nations of
Western Europe."
It was hard on the Norman people! For these poor devoted
rulers of men were forced "by the same necessity," to do much
forgery, perjury, and murder, to carry out their missioned task.
Neither will our rulers of men altogether give us up when we
escape from under their clutch: their care and sympathy follow
us round the world. Here, for example, the Irish-Americans
who have been living on good enough terms with native
American and other citizens, and who have been doing much
honest work here, making themselves independent, marrying
and giving in marriage, procreating a good breed, which is to have
its full share in the labour and the thought and the honourable
effort of every kind upon this Continent in the future-these
Irish-Americans find themselves followed, even here, from time
to time, by agents and emissaries of those blessed governors of
men, whose task is to lower us in the eyes of our fellow-citizens,
and to make them understand that we are not fit to be trusted
as citizens of this or any other country. These English have
taken direction of our people, once for all, and cannot without
a pang give up the management of us. Though we take the
wings of the morning and flee to the uttermost ends of the
earth, even there will their hand lead us and their right hand
guide us! Even here we find at every turn a vigilant English
ruler of men" cooling our friends, heating our enemies,
carefully warning our neighbours that we are false, treacherous,
14
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
cowardly, and cruel; that we never knew what to do with our
own country, when we had one, and will surely do what in us
lies to ruin America as we ruined Ireland,
I cannot but admire the Historian when in one of his lectures
he comes to deal with the apparently simple suggestion that,
inasmuch as England has shown nothing but imbecility and
stupidity in her dealings with Ireland for seven hundred years,
and has brought the island to be a world's wonder for its long
agony of misery, famine, and discontent, she had better,
perhaps, relieve herself of the charge, and leave Ireland alone.
At this idea he breaks out into a foam of rage. What! let
Ireland govern herself! No, never! Anything but that.
England will never consent either to Home Rule, or to any
altered arrangement which might put Ireland into the way of
being able to extort Home Rule—never, until England is beaten
to her knees: never! never!
Bravo! First Historian.
Beaten to her knees, quotha?
Beaten to her mouth and nose must she be. It is precisely the
sentiment which I have myself often written and uttered. The
British Empire must utterly perish, that is, be dismembered as
an empire-or "Ireland must die a daily death, and suffer an
endless martyrdom.”
Mr Froude seems, to admit all this: confesses with a
charming ingenuousness that Ireland has been always not only
unjustly and cruelly, but stupidly governed by England; that
she is now so governed, and is likely to be; nay, that Ireland
has ample provocation and perfect right to take up arms and
establish her independence on the field. Very well then, says
the Historian, draw your sword and come on! This is a curiously
happy sarcasm, addressed to a nation carefully disarmed by
law, and whose houses are at all times subject to search for
any kind of weapon. A gang of robbers seizes a traveller, ties
him to a tree, disarms him, strips him, robs him of his money;
he cries out and remonstrates; calls them a pack of rascals,
demands to be let loose: but one of the brigands replies to him,
Friend, you have no right to liberty unless you fight for it.
Your arguments are good, are unanswerable: therefore will
you fight us all, there as you stand, with your hands tied
behind your back to that tree. If you cannot do this, stop your
vain arguments and blatant' howlings-enough to disgust the
"
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
15
very owls in the trees." As Dean Swift said concerning the
book of Molyneux-"In reason, all government, without the
consent of the governed, is the very definition of slavery; but,
in fact, eleven men, well armed, will certainly subdue one single
man in his shirt."
Here, then, is the whole political theory and principle of the
Historian. We have you down, throttled, stripped, disarmed,
garrotted; our treatment of you and of your country has been
stupid, and a scandal: it is going to be in the future what it
has been in the past: and now what are you going to do about
it? I must confess that I like this Crusader of the Period for
so honest an exposition of his principles; and feel inclined to
take his part against the savage, word-catching critics who
have been finding him guilty of misquotations, mistranslations,
and even ignorant blunders, as they fondly dream.
And does a citizen of Brooklyn, indeed, or that keen Scotch-
man, Mr Hosack, or the Quarterly Review, and "fifty others,"
do they, or does any of them, innocently imagine that they can
corner the First Living Historian, by pointing out misquota-
tions, falsified authorities, and the like? The Historian defies
them. He has composed his "History of England" from
"perhaps two hundred, thousand documents," and, with a calm
irony, invites his critics to follow him through those two hun-
dred thousand pigeon-holes, some in the British Museum, some
in the State Paper Office, some in Trinity College Library, or
elsewhere; and he cannot think of replying to any special
charge of fraud or forgery, unless his accusers go through all
those references. "I have read everything myself," he ob-
serves in his last lecture. "I have made my own extracts
from papers which I might never see a second time." And
again—“It often happens that half a letter is in one collection
and half in another. There will be two letters from the same
person and the same place, on the same subject and on the
same day. One may be among the State Papers, another in
the British Museum. I will not say that passages from two
such letters may not at times appear in my text as if they were
one." But he has done his utmost, as he assures us, to tell the
truth. And those who doubt it have only to go through his
200,000 pigeon-holes. Thus a rabbit squats at one of the
burrows of his intricate warren, and invites the terriers to
16
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
chase; they give chase; there are a thousand galleries, cor-
ridors, labyrinths, the rabbit's ears are seen for a moment peep-
ing at one of the holes; the dog goes for him, but in the
twinkling of an eye the rabbit's fud is seen at another hole forty
yards off. No straightforward terrier can follow him up,
though a well-trained ferret might. Thus, when the Historian
brandishes before us the 200,000 authorities, which we must
master before we can "convict" him of even one error, he in-
timidates the simple mind. In vain the citizen of Brooklyn
points out that the Historian has printed a letter as from Ran-
dolph, in Edinburgh, which was never written by said Ran-
dolph, attributing to Queen Mary of Scotland an atrocious and
blood-thirsty saying. He replies that if Randolph, in Edinburgh,
did not write that letter, yet another man somewhere in Eng-
land did write another letter, and although that other letter
does not attribute the blood-thirsty utterance to Queen Mary
at all, yet the Historian denies that he has been convicted—no,
only accused by the citizen of Brooklyn. If he answered the
citizen he would have to answer "fifty others " So many are
the charges which have been made against him, and with a
frank and noble candour he offers to submit the examination of
his authorities to a commission of five Irish judges (out of
twelve), with the Irish Lord Chancellor to preside; they are
to examine the 200,000 authorities, and if they find that he
has been unfaithful in citing any one, he will expunge that
passage. Can a candid Historian do more?
Some persons may term this proposal an illusory kind of
challenge because the human mind is incapable of conceiving
the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and four of the Judges quitting
the bench, where they have their own business to mind, fling-
ing off wigs and ermine, burying themselves for (let us say)
seven years in the crypts of record-offices, museums and college
libraries, closely following the Historian as he fits his references
or parts of them to an MS. in London, then dives and re-ap-
pears
in Dublin to find the other lines of the letter. Not seven
years, but seventeen would be needful for this labour, and the
enemies of our First Historian will be sure to say that he never
would have proposed such an inquiry but that he knows it to
be impossible. I suggest, then, that he add to the list of com-
missioners the name of General Grant.
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
17
In short, the Historian is too hard a nut for these word-
catching critics to crack. Let them not imagine that they can
impale such a man as this upon the horn of an inverted comma,
or hang him at the tail of a semicolon. It is in vain for the
citizen of Brooklyn, or fifty others to taunt him with misquota-
tions; he smiles in front of his 200,000 pigeon holes, and says
to them, “Come on, then, gentlemen, follow! follow!—or send
on the Lord Chancellor or the President; either do this or for
ever hold your peace." It is in vain also that another small
critic points out how the First Historian, having occasion to
refer to the oil-bottle of Rheims, speaks of the bottle as a man,
and calls him "Saint Ampoul." Do they think they have
caught him here? Vain dream! Mr Froude connait son Rab-
belais, and knows that famous voyage which Pantagruel made
to consult the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, whose name was
Bac-Buc; and this is the very saint and the very bottle which
the learned person means. Ah! critics, you are not going to
trip up the First Living Historian in this flimsy kind of way!
I am now in good humour with the Crusader of the Period,
and in the next chapter shall come closer to him.
F7
B
18
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
CHAPTER II.
CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE 66 FIRST HISTORIAN."
FROUDE is really a man to be congratulated, or almost envied.
He has stirred up hosts of vindictive enemies on both sides of
the Atlantic. He is the Hero of Two Worlds, in another sense
than the Lafayette sense. Like bloodhounds, they are upon
his track in either hemisphere; his new book-" The English in
Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," will have a sale unexampled:
and this-as they say in New England-this is the calculation.
I said that the discussion raised by the Crusader is only
beginning. Now it grows hotter and fiercer every day. Not
only that fell critic, the bull-dog "Citizen of Brooklyn," holds
our Historian fast, with a grip like death, but I find that Mr
Prendergast, author of the "Cromwellian Settlement," has
fallen upon Historian Froude with a fury even more ferocious
than Mr Meline's own; not counting the long array of his other
enemies in England and Scotland. I have the honour to make
him my compliments. Nothing could fall out more happily for
him than this view-hallo and full cry of eager hunters. Mr
Prendergast, after having read the first volume of the new
book, has addressed several letters to the Dublin press; one
of which opens thus—
"Mr Froude, I believe, is lighting a fire that he has little
conception of. Deep as our hatred has hitherto been at our
unparalleled historic wrongs, it is as nothing to the intense
detestation we shall hereafter hold the English in. Though
the vile English press are unwilling to commit themselves to
the support of Mr Froude's crusade against the exiled Irish,
until they see the success of it, it is easy to perceive how they
sympathise with it, and how gladly they would see the
Americans hate us as deeply as they do themselves. For, in
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
19
truth, the self-imposed mission of this friend and lover of
Ireland (God save us from our English lovers!) is to turn the
Americans against us."
Here Mr Prendergast is quite wrong, on one point! Our
Historian knew very well that he was lighting a fire; and
intended it. Moreover, he will get out of it himself without
singing a whisker by means of a patent fire-escape which he
has invented. But now, some one may ask, who is Mr
Prendergast? He is an author of whom Mr Froude himself
made honourable mention in this very book, the " English
in Ireland." He says:-
"I cannot pass over this part of my narrative without
making my acknowledgments to Mr Prendergast, to whose
personal courtesy I am deeply indebted, and to whose impar-
tiality and candour in his volume on the Cromwellian Settle-
ment I can offer no higher praise than by saying that the
perusal of it has left on my mind an impression precisely
opposite to that of Mr Prendergast himself. He writes as an
Irish patriot-I as an Englishman; but the difference between
us is not on the facts, but on the opinion to be formed about
them." Meaning that, in Prendergast's opinion, it was hard
measure to compel all Irish land-owners in three of the four
provinces, on a certain day in winter, by sound of trumpet and
beate of drumme, to arise and transplant themselves into the
wilds of Connaught;-but that in Froude's opinion it was a
wholesome measure, intended for the good of the Irish them-
selves. But what I specially desire to call attention to, in
this place, is the excessive discourtesy with which Mr
Prendergast repays that honourable mention by the First of
Living Historians. After having, by his "personal courtesy,"
(and something more than that) earned so grateful and grace-
ful an acknowledgment from so grand a prince of literature,
this Irishman no sooner reads the book in which so flattering
a notice of himself is contained, than he suddenly turns rough
and rude, and even brutally barbarous. He ignores entirely
the compliment to himself; and is perhaps ashamed of it.
"The twistings and wrigglings of this English viper "-such
is about the best language he can find for his quondam
acquaintance. Mr Prendergast admits that he did guide the
researches of our Historian, and did furnish him with authori-
20
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
ties and references, sometimes directly, sometimes through
others. But he soon had reason to doubt the good faith of
this ardent historic investigator, and thought it needful to deal
with him accordingly. In the first quarter of the eighteenth
century, about the years 1719 and 1723, occurred certain
legislative proceedings in the Colonial Parliament of Dublin,
concerning which some doubts arose; and both Mr Prendergast
and Mr Froude were at the same moment labouring in record
offices to ascertain the facts, and discover the documents. Mr
Prendergast found what was wanted;-I do not enter here
into the odious and indecent details; but must do so before I
have done with Froude. Having lighted upon the documents,
the laborious Irish scholar, in all good faith, thought he was
bound to communicate them to Mr Froude. Here is his own
account of this matter in his late letter to the Irish journals:-
"Now for Mr Froude's treatment of this event. He knew
he could not avoid it, or mis-state it, as he has done so many
other events. For, having met Mr Froude shortly afterwards,
making his searches in the State Paper Department at Dublin
Castle, I thought it right to tell him of my discovery. But he
was already aware, so he told me, of the fact, having seen the
original letter in the Public Record Office, London. There was
something, however, so extraordinary in the man's demeanour
that I had my misgivings that he intended to misdeal with the
transaction in some way; so I published it in the Freeman's
Journal of the 28th April, 1871. I confess I had great
curiosity to see how he would treat the matter in these
circumstances."
G
The writer then reprints some words and phrases from this
book, and continues-
"Let it be remembered that I had bound him with such
strong cords by publishing the entire letter beforehand that
there was no possibility of his mis-stating the terms or the
scope of it; and then observe the writhings and twistings of
this English viper, that, nursed in his youthful sickness by the
poor peasantry of Mayo, and since that day a frequent visitor
to Ireland, seeks to spit his venom against us at home by pub-
lishing this book, and then immediately rushes to America to
endeavour to instil into the English race abroad the same
hatred he and his colleagues are filled with at home."
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
21
I mean to tell something of the matter which was in ques-
tion, before I have done; but in the meantime it is enough to
arouse the sympathies of all readers in favour of Mr Froude,
by showing the shocking manner in which his kindly overtures
to Prendergast have been received. It is true no compliment
from our Historian could elevate the reputation of Mr Prender-
gast, the author of the most perfect Monograph of one special
and cardinal point in our Irish history; but still it seems hard
that the recipient of so pretty a compliment should have no
better return to make than refusing the courtesy with both his
hands, saying-" Keep off, you English viper!" Is the time
indeed come when these generous tributes from one literary
man to another, which give such a grace and charm to the
intercourse of lofty intellects, are to become of no account?' Is
a gentleman, who has received so flattering an eulogy from a
great man, justified in responding with a kick and a curse?
Let a discerning public judge.
In the midst of all this tumult of abuse the First Historian
walks serene; he is altogether impassive, going calmly on the
even tenor of his way, answering all hostile critics with disdain.
Mr Meline has vainly tried to worry him into giving some sign,
making some defence in the matter of Queen Mary of Scotland
and her "latest Historian." Yet the critic seems to have been
aware from the first that he would get nothing out of the man.
Says that inevitable citizen of Brooklyn :-
"That Mr Froude at this or at any other time would
answer the charges presented in 'Mary Queen of Scots and
her latest English Historian,' I have never expected. He can-
not do it and better his position, and I am, moreover, suffici-
ently familiar with his manner of fence' with critics at home
to know that he would not now attempt serious responses in a
case of any gravity. Mr Froude cannot reply to my allega-
tions, because he says, 'I am on one side of the Atlantic, and
my books and papers are on the other;' and he then repeats
the plaintive wail, made several years ago in the Pall Mall
Gazette, touching his gigantic labours with documents and
MSS. in half-a-dozen languages.' But during all the years
Mr Froude was at home among his books and papers, his most
aggressive critics and those of bluntest speech succeeded no
better than I have in obtaining answer, explanation, or apology
22
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
from him. In reply to the most damaging imputations, to
the most offensive accusations, he had nothing to say-and,
wisely, said nothing."
It is an attitude of grand disdain; but this inevitable Meline
does not like it; he would prefer that the Historian would be
good enough to explain some of those very numerous passages
in which he has brought forward misquotations or palmed off
mistranslations, and to expound how it has happened that all
those "clerical errors," as Froude calls them, were on one side,
always going to favour the scoundrel he intended to whitewash,
and to blacken the unhappy Papist he meant to cover with
obloquy.
Father Burke, I think, in his lectures, only ventured to call
in question one citation of an authority made by his opponent
a statement that, while the Americans were in revolt, the
Irish Catholics, represented by Lord Fingal and others, went
crawling to the foot of the throne, praying to be led against
the rebellious Americans. The great Dominican said he had
searched for some such address, thinking very naturally that a
document of so much importance would certainly have been
printed; but he had not found any document answering the
description, although he had found, in Curry's Collection, an
address testifying general loyalty. It is servile enough, God
knows, and is signed certainly Fingal, Gormanstown, Dillon,
Kenmare, and many others; but it says no word of America.
Here is the Historian's proud rejoinder in his last lecture:-
"I quoted a loyal address to George the Third, signed in
the name of the whole body by the leading Irish Catholics.
Father Burke says that, though fulsome in its tone, it contains
no words about America. As he meets me with a contradic-
tion, I can but insist that I copied the words which I read to
you from the original in the State Paper Office, and I will read
one or two sentences of it again. The address declares that
the Catholics of Ireland abhorred the unnatural rebellion
against His Majesty which had broken out among his Ameri-
can subjects; that they laid at his feet 2,000,000 loyal, faith-
ful, and affectionate hearts and hands, ready to exert them-
selves against His Majesty's enemies in any part of the world;
that their loyalty had been always as the dial to the sun, true
though not shone upon."
•
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
23
This last line-is the Historian very certain that it is not a
quotation from Tom Moore? At any rate, he peremptorily
shuts all mouths by saying, "I can but insist that I copied it
in the State Paper Office." Now, the fact is, that nobody, by
this time, believes one word that the First of Living Historians
writes or utters, upon his own authority. There are, accord-
ingly, many still who will not believe that such a document
exists-not at least until after the Lord Chancellor of Ireland
and the Judges have exhibited a certified copy of it, in the
Chancery Office, Four Courts, Dublin.
With his head high, and lofty disdain upon his countenance,
this haughty creature thus finally brushes off the troublesome
swarm of his assailants, and wraps himself nobly in his mantle
of proof. Closing his last lecture, he says:-
66 I
"Here I must leave him" (namely, Father Burke).
leave untouched a large number of blots which I had marked
for criticism; but if I have not done enough to him already, I
shall waste my words with trying to do more; and for the
future, as long as I remain in America, neither he, if he returns
to the charge, nor any other assailant, must look for further
answer from me. His own knowledge of his subject is wide
and varied; but I can compare his workmanship to nothing so
well as to one of the lives of his own Irish saints, in which
legend and reality are so strangely blended that the true aspects
of things and character can no longer be discerned.”
The sarcasm about the Irish Saint is in English good taste,
being addressed to an Irish Dominican Friar! The Christian
Young Men rub their hands with glee, over so neat and cunning
a cut administered to those superstitious Romanists. Yet, after
all, perhaps the Historian has not spent much of his time in
studying the lives of the Irish Saints. He is more deeply read
in the legend of that round-bellied French saint, the jolly "St
Ampoul;" where, perhaps, Father Burke cannot follow him.
The main thing which we learn most explicitly from this
last paragraph is, that the malignant critics of the Historian
may now consider themselves safe from the effects of his re-
sentment. There are fifty of them; and I am now emboldened
to become the fifty-first: he will not notice any of us; his sole
reply to one and all being "Dixi." Very well; although I
should deem it a very high honour indeed, if I could anyhow
24
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
goad and badger so illustrious a person into replying, even in
the most damaging manner to me, I must not think of so flatter-
ing an encounter: and as I have the Book itself before me, I
can only comment upon its text as my lights may enable me.
So now for the Book itself.
At the opening of a "section" of chapter third, the Historian,
speaking of the situation of the country in the reign of James
II., has this frank and satisfactory statement of the position of
affairs-
“The Irish believed that Ireland was theirs: that the English
were invading tyrants who had stolen their lands, broken up
their laws and habits, and proscribed their creed. The English
believed that Ireland was a country attached, inseparably, by
situation and circumstances, to the English crown; that they
were compelled to govern a people who were unable or unwil-
ling to govern themselves; and that the spoliation with which
they were reproached had been forced upon them by the
treachery and insubordination of the native owners. Between
these two views of the same facts no compromise was possible."
Certainly not; and, indeed, everybody who has any interest
in the question ought to feel obliged to the English Historian
for stating the issue so clearly, and for arguing it so steadily
and consistently throughout his work. Mr Prendergast
expresses the hope that "The English in Ireland" may be
translated and published in France and in Germany, as we may
be sure it will be. In the meantime, we have it in very plain
English; so that Americans (if they care) have the best oppor-
tunity of learning the whole case of our nation in its relation
to England, upon excellent authority. I call it excellent
authority for this special purpose-namely, for ascertaining the
genuine sentiment of the English people, because all the
author's historical books have an enormous currency in that
country; and this one, above all, is sure to be devoured, by
the multitudinous readers of England, with a greedy delight.
I beg leave to commend it to them. I give my modest aid to
the advertising of it. In truth, if some Irishman, possessed of
the grim humour of Dean Swift, had written these chapters
with the intention of presenting the English case in the most
grotesquely horrible and offensive point of view, he could
scarcely go beyond our Historian. One might be almost
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
25
inclined to suspect him of this malignant design, if the man
were a wit like the Dean of St Patrick's. But there is not a
ray of humour in his intellect: and when he gravely propounds
that, to term the "abolishing" of the religion of a people by
fines, whipping, transportation, and the gallows, a case of
religious persecution is "a mere abuse of words;" and when
he mentions as a wholly untenable theory the belief prevalent
among the Irish, that Ireland was theirs, he means no sarcasm;
it is the most serious and stolid British insolence; not intended
to be laughed at by any means, nor a fit subject for amusement
Such words call up
at all. The thing has an odour of blood.
the ghosts of many generations of murdered men; and they
are intended, and calculated, to make more such ghosts for
ages yet to come. If I have heretofore spoken of this man's
performances in a tone somewhat like levity, I drop that tone
from the present moment, and proceed to expose the Historian
in all his naked horror.
There is no need for the present purpose to examine this
writer's account of the "occupation of Ireland," at the end of
the twelfth century, by people whom he calls the Normans,
"whose peculiar mission was to govern men." The con-
querors of England, and the invaders of Ireland, were,
according to the Historian, not only Normans but Norman
aristocrats. In this, as in everything else, he carefully consults
and flatters the prevailing sentiment of his own people at the
present day. The English cannot endure to say, or to hear,
that their island was conquered in one battle by a mob of
Frenchmen-Frenchmen, pure and simple, including those who
lived in Normandy. They cannot endure to be told that
one whole wing, and one-third of William's army, consisted of
Bretons; another wing of Gascons and other people of the
south and centre of France. And as for the "Normans" who
came over afterwards, “to take charge" of Ireland, it seems
to our English friends invidious to dwell upon the fact that
they were not Normans at all-you might as well call them
Auvergnats or Savoyards. The Fitzstephens and Fitz-
maurices, who preceded Henry the Second, were Geraldines,
the Italian Gherardini; and their mother was the notorious
Nesta, a Welsh lady of no uneasy virtue. Out of the same
nest as Nesta came also Giraldus Cambrensis, the very first
26
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
of the carpet-bag school of writers upon Ireland. And
when Henry himself came over with his knights, he also had
no title to be called a Norman aristocrat, nor a Norman at all
-for, in fact, he was born in Anjou, where his father before
him was born, and his children after him. He became, indeed.
Duke of Normandy, and he became King of England; yet he
never called himself a Norman; and if any one had affronted
him by calling him an Englishman, he would have had the
insulter lashed with dog-whips.
I notice this rubbish about "Norman rulers of men," only
to point out how sedulously the Historian has consulted the
national vanity of his public; but I shall now apply myself to
his treatment of that which he calls "the gravest event in all
Irish history, the turning-point on which all later controversies
between England and Ireland hinge"-The "Massacre" of
1641.
"Those who see in that massacre the explanation and the
defence of the subsequent treatment of Ireland, however
unwilling to revive the memory of scenes which rivalled in
carnage the horrors of St Bartholomew, are compelled to
repeat the evidence once held to be unreasonable." In these
words (page 83) the Historian commits himself to the whole
ghastly story. He will not, indeed, insist that two hundred
thousand Protestants were assassinated in six months. But if
there was a certain exaggeration in the estimate of the numbers,
he assures us that "for these enormous figures the Catholic
priests were responsible. They returned the numbers of the
killed in their several parishes, up to March, 1642, as 154,000.”
Also, "Sir John Temple considered that 150,000 perished in
two months, or 300,000 in two years. But as our learned
Historian knows well enough that there were not so many Pro-
testants in all Ireland, counting women and children, he thinks
it best to take the cooler and calmer estimate of Lord Claren-
don, who reduced the estimate to 40,000, or he is willing even
to take Sir William Petty's numbers, namely, 37,000. And
even these figures, he says, may seem too large. But that
there was in fact a most frightful massacre perpetrated in
Ulster, he feels it his duty to reaffirm; and for proof of it, in
all its details, he refers to the folio volumes of sworn depositions
now to be read in the library of Trinity College, "whose evidence
((
""
در
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
27
is the eternal witness of blood which the Irish Catholics have,
from that time to this, been vainly trying to wash away."
Now, I propose to show-
First, that there was no massacre at all.
Second, that the Historian knows there was no massacre.
Third, that he intentionally and advisedly cites "authori-
ties" which prove nothing and shed not a ray of light.
..
Fourth, that in producing Temple, Petty, Dean Maxwell,
and others, as witnesses, he is producing those carpet-baggers
who had need of establishing a "massacre," because it was
their title-deed to the great estates afterwards confiscated—
that, in short, there was money in the massacre.
Fifth, that he has woven together this tissue of sanguinary
falsehood for the purpose of blackening and scandalising a whole
people before the civilised world, or, as he expresses it, making
that gory fable" the explanation and defence of the subsequent
treatment of Ireland," meaning Penal Laws, and the whipping-
post and the gallows and universal plunder of all persons who
went to Mass.
Sir William Petty gathered together, out of the confiscated
estates, those vast domains which his descendant, Lord
Lansdowne, now possesses in Ireland. Sir John Temple was
the founder of the Irish fortunes of the Temples Lords
Palmerston. Dr Maxwell was made Bishop of Kilmore, in
reward for one affidavit; to be sure it was a hard one, as we
shall see; but he swallowed it, and it agreed with him. Sir
John Borlase, an Englishman, but a carpet-bag judge on the
Irish bench, had a share out of the spoil of the Papists. And
these men and many others like them, and their dependants,
could not afford to let the "massacre" be questioned at all; it
was on the massacre they lived and were providing for their
little families; if any man at that time doubted the massacre
they would have his blood.
Indeed, in the last lecture of the Historian, he refers to the
Rev. Ferdinando Warner, a very respectable clergyman of the
Church of England, and author of a History of Ireland, who
made a most careful examination into the alleged murders of
Protestants, and reduces them to two thousand one hundred
people-a heavy hecatomb enough, one might think: but it
will not answer our Historian's purpose at all: he cannot come
28
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
down to so low a figure: he does not know but that the next
Protestant may whittle it down to nothing. So he treats Mr
Warner's estimate with a pooh pooh, and actually says (I quote
the World's very good report), "I am sorry to say I have
known many Protestants entirely unable to distinguish truth
from falsehood." Indeed, the Historian is utterly disgusted
at such a "Protestant" as this, who tries to cut and lop away
the whole foundation on which the treatment of Ireland is
grounded and justified. Such a Protestant is no better than
that Papist keeper of records in London who actually answered
Mr Meline's inquiry by giving him such information as convicted
the Historian of fraud.
I am about to prove myself a very poor sort of Protestant,
according to the Historian's religious test: for the task I have
undertaken and the end I have set before me are to demon-
strate, to all rational and fair-minded people, that this indi-
vidual, purporting to be a historian, has, both by his lectures
and his book, deliberately falsified the very history which he
undertook to elucidate; that he has used his researches of years
with the cold malignity of a spider to involve his intended
victim in an inextricable network of black falsehood; referring
for his "facts" to authorities he knew to be worse than worth-
less; presenting those pretended authorities to his readers as
trustworthy and undeniable; suppressing, in general, or else
disparaging (as of no consequence) all evidence which bore
against his bloody plan; and that he has done all this with a
certain "purpose fixed as the stars "-to use a fine expression
of his own; but, in fact, I prefer my own illustration to his,
my own spider to his star :-and that this settled purpose was,
to cover with execration, and to overwhelm with a load of
calumny, a generation of men, all dead two or three hundred
years ago, in such sort as to cast a shadow of horror over their
children and their children's children, even to the ninth and
tenth generation. I know it may be suggested that the
motive of his labour was, perhaps, no worse than to insure
a vast circulation for his Book, by flattering the conceit of
his own people, and feeding their bitterest and dearest national
passion. Let those who find this a good excuse give to the
Historian all the benefit of it.
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
29
CHAPTER III,
MAKING THE ISSUE.
I SHALL have little or nothing to say touching the cruel
oppressions inflicted, for so many ages, upon my countrymen;
and absolutely nothing at all in the way of complaint or
vituperation, on account of those sad events. Let it be
granted, for the present, that the English, or the Normans, or
whoever the Historian pleases, were "forced by circumstances
to take charge" of Ireland, and that, having so taken charge,
they were forced to take all the lands of the island for their
own people; forced to proscribe the religion of the country,
and transport priests for saying Mass; forced to stir up
continual insurrections in order to help the good work of
confiscation; let all this theory stand admitted; but whatever
may be thought of all that, the present point which I shall
make is, that the Historian bears false witness at any rate-
Historian and History being all one huge fraud together. If
I do not prove this, I prove nothing.
Taking up, then, the said History at the "turning-point"
of the famous "Massacre," I shall first give some account of
the array of witnesses brought forward to establish it; and
especially of Temple, Borlase, and Petty, and of the "forty
folios" of depositions; testimonies, indeed, which I did not
expect that any Englishman, or any Orangeman, would ever
have the audacity to cite again. As the First of Living
Historians, however, has thought proper to drag to light again
the whole hideous romance, and has actually come over to
America to pour it into the horrified ears of this people-both
by lectures and through the medium of a book-I shall now
follow him into the revolting details at least of the one period
of a few years which he has selected as the turning-point in
the history of my native country.
30
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
"}
It is very observable, indeed, and somewhat entertaining,
that from his very dark portraiture of the Irish people in
general, he kindly excepts us Protestants. "When I call
them a generation of riotous and treacherous cut-throats,'
he says, "I don't mean you. You Protestants, on the
contrary, are the noble and godly element, which we, the
English, have introduced, to bring some order out of that
bloody chaos-you are the missioned race- as Macaulay, the
predecessor of Froude, calls you the imperial race that we
have planted, enabling you to help yourselves to all the lands
and goods of the irreclaimable Popish savages, that you might
hold the fair island in trust for us-for us, Ireland's masters,
and yours.
You are our own Protestant Boys:' I pat you
on the back, and exhort you not to do the work of the Lord
negligently." But I am not myself acquainted with any Irish
Protestant gentleman who is likely to accept graciously this
considerate exception in our favour. My own friends in Ireland,
from boyhood-at school-at the University, and in after life.
-have been generally of opinion that it would be a blessed and
glorious deed to sweep into the sea the last remnants of
English domination in their country. I never was taught in
my youth that the man of Two Sacraments has a natural right
and title to take all the possessions, and to take the lives, of the
men of Seven Sacraments. My father was not only a Protes-
tant, but a Protestant clergyman; and he, in the year '98,
when only a student in college, was sworn in as an United
Irishman; and then proceeded to swear in his friends; and
the noble object of that society was to abolish the English
power in Ireland. Grattan was a Protestant, and he declared
that he despised the pretended liberty of half a million of his
countrymen, based upon the serfdom and slavery of two millions
more: and it was this Protestant who penned the Declaration
of Irish Independence, and created a Volunteer army to make
good his words. And Tone was a Protestant, who brought
on two invasions of the French, to free his native island from
the English. And Tandy was a Protestant, who commanded
the artillery of the Volunteer army. I fear that the Historian
will find, in our Protestants, an ungrateful set of clients. We
will not have his advocacy upon any terms. I can imagine
that I see William Smith O'Brien receiving the courtesies of
،
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
31
our Historian, as a Protestant, and therefore, a sort of deputy
Briton. This revered name of O'Brien I cannot mention
without bowing in homage to so grand a memory.
For years
we broke the bitter bread of exile together, and drank of the
same cup of captivity. He lived for the cause of his country's
independence, and never till his latest breath repented of his
gallant though fruitless effort to destroy with armed hand the
tyranny that was gnawing away his people's life. It would
be easy to name many other Protestants of the same principles;
but at present let us content ourselves with Mr Prendergast,
who has so fiercely declined the special compliment offered
him by this Historian. And, in truth, the very best book upon
the subject of the turning-point of Irish History is this very
"Cromwellian Settlement," by Prendergast. Let nobody take
Froude's poison without taking Prendergast's antidote.
That there was an insurrection is certain. It began on the
23rd of October, in the year 1641; and the whole plan and
purpose of it were to retake and possess the farms and houses
which had been forcibly taken away from the Irish of Ulster,
only a few years before. From twenty years to thirty years
had elapsed since most of the people of six counties had been
driven to the mountains and bogs, that their pleasant fields
might be occupied by Scotch and English settlers. The
remnant of those Ulster clans had been reduced to the condi-
tion of labourers, or very small cottiers. Many men of high
name, with the culture and associations of the gentry of that
day, were tilling, as ploughmen, and reaping as harvest men,
for the stranger, fields that had been their own. Others, with
their shivering families, could look down from the brow of
Tyrone hills upon those smiling valleys of the Blackwater
and the Foyle, whence their own fathers had trooped, forty
years before, to join their clans on the Blackwater, and to ride
beside the bridle-rein of Hugh O'Neill, at the Yellow Ford. Of
this sad and plundered people many of the young and high-
spirited had emigrated to France or Spain, to take service in
the armies of those countries. The rest lingered sorrowfully,
in the hope that some alteration might be brought about, in
their doleful lot, by a change of kings. For example, when
King Charles the First came to the throne of England, there
seemed to them a prospect of some share of relief or reparation:
}
32
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
in the meantime they endured life, hiding their clergy in
woods and caves, concealing themselves with their wives and
little ones, as much as possible, from the notice of the insolent
intruders. And when, at last, that King Charles and his
Parliament were on the very point of open war, the leaders of
the Northern Irish thought they might give counsel to their
people-disarmed and scattered as they were-that the time
was come to strike a blow. Of the long series of exasperating
provocations which now at last made them ready to try this
desperate remedy, I need not here speak. It is enough that
the turning-point was reached.
The Historian here cannot bring himself to specify names
and dates, nor even to indicate, save in a general way, the
authorities for his fearful story. His sensibilities will not
permit him to dwell upon scenes so sanguinary; but he gives
this general account of the situation :—
(6
Savage creatures of both sexes, yelping in chorus, and
brandishing their skenes; boys practising their young hands
in stabbing and torturing the English children-these were the
scenes which were witnessed daily through all parts of Ulster.
The fury extended even to the farm-stock, and sheep and oxen
were slaughtered, not for food, but in the blindness of rage.
The distinction between Scots and English soon vanished.
Religion was made the new dividing line, and the one crime
was to be a Protestant. The escorts proved in most cases but
gangs of assassins. In the wildest of remembered winters,
the shivering fugitives were goaded along the highways stark
naked and foodless. If some, happier than the rest, found a
few rags to throw about them, they were torn instantly away.
If others, in natural modesty, twisted straw ropes round their
waists, the straw was set on fire. When the tired little ones
dropped behind, the escort lashed the parents forward, and the
children were left to die. One witness, Adam Clover, of Slonory,
in Cavan, swore that he saw a woman who had been thus
deserted, set upon by three Irish women, who stripped her
naked in frost and snow. She fell in labour under their hands,
and she and her child died. Many were buried alive. Those
who died first were never buried, but were left to be devoured
by dogs, and rats, and swine. Some were driven into rivers
and drowned, some hanged, some mutilated, some ripped with
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
33
•
knives. The priests told the people that the Protestants
were worse than dogs; they were devils, and served the devil;
and the killing of them was a meritorious act.' One wretch
stabbed a woman with a baby in her arms, and left the infant
in mockery on its dead mother's breast, bidding it 'Suck,
English bastard.' The insurgents swore in their madness they
would not leave English man, woman, or child alive in
Ireland. They flung babies into boiling pots, or tossed them
into the ditches to the pigs. They put out grown men's eyes,
turned them adrift to wander, and starved them to death.
Two cow-boys boasted of having murdered thirty women and
children; and a lad was heard swearing that his arm was so tired
with killing, that he could scarce lift his hand above his head."
The main authority for all this is Sir John Temple, whose
story is founded upon the famous folios of Depositions; but
the Historian does not cite the depositions themselves, merely
saying that they are the "eternal witness of blood." To those
who have made Irish history a study, these wonderful
affidavits are familiar, and I should be ashamed to take up
space with them, but that to most readers they will be some-
thing new, and will, besides, show the exact sources from which
the Historian has drawn his bloody marvels. Here, for
example, are several specimens—
"The examination of Dame Butler, who being duly sworn,
deposeth that
"She was credibly informed by Dorothy Renals, who had
been several times an eye-witness of these lamentable specta-
cles, that she had seen to the number of five-and-thirty English
going to execution; and that she had seen them when they
were executed, their bodies exposed to devouring ravens, and
not afforded as much as burial.
"And this deponent saith, That Sir Edward Butler did
credibly inform her that James Butler of Finyhinch had hanged
and put to death all the English that were at Goran and Wells,
and all thereabouts !!!
"Jane Jones, servant to the deponent, did see the English
formerly specified going to their execution, and, as she con-
ceived, they were about the number of thirty-five; and was told
by Elizabeth Home that there were forty gone to execution.
Jurat. Sept. 7, 1642.
ANNE BUTLER.”
с
34
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
?
Thomas Fleetwood, late curate of Kilbeggan, in the
county of Westmeath, deposeth, That he hath heard from the
snouths of the rebels themselves of great cruelties acted by them.
And, for one instance, that they stabbed the mother, one Jane
Addis by name, and left her little suckling child, not a quarter
old, by the corpse, and then they put the breast of its dead
mother into its mouth, and bid it suck, English bastard,' and
so left it there to perish."
6
"Richard Bourk, bachelor in divinity, of the county of Fer-
managh, deposeth, That he heard, and verily believeth, the burn-
ing and killing of one hundred, at least, in the Castle of Tullah;
and that the same was done after fair quarter promised. Jurat.
July 12, 1643.”
In looking through the monstrous farrago of swearing, it is
remarkable, first, that scarcely any one saw the horrid deeds
he or she swears to, but only tells what somebody told some-
body else, who told this deponent; also, that in most cases the
authorities for the statements are called, in general terms, "the
rebels." For example-
"Katherine, the relict of William Coke, of the county of
Armagh, deposeth, That many of her neighbours, who had been
prisoners among the rebels, said and affirmed that divers of the
rebels would confess, brag, and boast how they took an English
Protestant, one Robert Wilkinson, at Kilmore, and held his feet
in the fire until they burned him to death."
To do the Historian justice, there is not one of the fearful
scenes he has above described that he did not find in evidence
duly sworn to upon the Holy Evangelists. The babies flung
into boiling pots, or left to be devoured by swine; the men and
women stripped naked, and driven out under the wild winter
weather. Nay, more, he is too modest, and does not cite by
any means the most revolting cases, fearing, perhaps, to give
a certain grotesque air to his pages. I can supply him, for his
second edition, with more and better horrors. Stripping, for
instance, is but a trifle; why not give us the case of Margaret
Fermeney, an old woman of seventy-five, who swears that on her
way up to Dublin, "she was stripped naked by the Irish seven
times in one day." He will find this in the famous folios, and also
in Temple. Or why not tell us what Elizabeth Baskerville swears
she heard a murderer's wife say to the murderer, her husband-
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
35
"Elizabeth Baskerville deposeth, That she heard the wife of
Florence Fitz-Patrick, find much fault with her husband's
soldiers, because they did not bring along with them the grease
of Mrs Nicholson, whom they had slain, for her to make
candles withal. Jurat. April 26, 1643."
Indeed, several of the affidavits make express mention of
the strong desire those Irish had to collect Protestant grease.
And it is all set forth in those volumes, which are the "eternal
witness of blood!"
I observe that the Historian has avoided the many miracles
and ghost stories which are found in the same repertory of facts.
Yet these would greatly heighten the sensational charm of his
work; and here is one which might probably suit him.
"Arthur Culm, of Cloughwater, in the county of Cavan,
esquire, deposeth, That he was credibly informed, by some that
were present there, that there were thirty women and young
children and seven men flung into the river of Belturbert; and
when some of them offered to swim for their lives, they were,
by the rebels, followed in boats, and knocked on the head with
poles; the same day they hanged two women at Turbert; and
this deponent doth verily believe that Mulmore O'Rely, the then
sheriff, had a hand in the commanding the murder of those
said persons, for that he saw him write two notes, which he sent
to Turbert by Brien O'Rely, upon whose coming these murders
were committed; and those persons who were present also
affirmed that the bodies of those thirty persons drowned did not
appear upon the water till about six weeks after, past; as the
said C'Rely came to the town, all the bodies came floating up to
the very bridge; those persons were all formerly stayed in the
town by his protection, when the rest of their neighbours in
the town went away.
""
There are many other very miraculous facts sworn to, which
are quite accessible to the Historian; also many other and still
more savage cruelties, which he does his readers positive
wrong in suppressing. I shall present still another spicilegium
culled from the "eternal witness of blood; " and afterwards
explain why these depositions were called for, how they were
obtained, and how they were paid for. All which the learned
Historian knew very well, but preferred to suppress for the
honour of Protestant human nature.
36
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
La
CHAPTER IV.
THE SWEARERS.
THE seventeenth century was the period of our most thriv-
ing Protestant trade in swearing. It was the time of Popish
plots, and of multitudinous "depositions." As for the thirty-
four folio volumes of oaths, to which Historian Froude calmly
refers us, as an "eternal witness," that learned person must know
that many of them were paid for in money, most of them in
confiscated land and lucrative office; that many of them were
never sworn at all, appearing with the pen drawn across the
words "being first duly sworn;" that the Lords of the Council
of Ireland, and the heads of the "English interest" in the
island, absolutely needed these oaths for procuring the indict-
ment of all Irish Catholics who owned anything; and that they
bought the said oaths as in market overt. Carte, author of the
"Life of Ormonde," is a Protestant authority; and Mr Froude
has read his work, for he often cites it where it suits him ; but
he takes care not to give us this passage from Carte's first
volume-
"The Roman Catholics complained that there were strange
practices used with the jurors, menaces to some, promises of
rewards, and parts of the forfeited estates; and though great
numbers of the indicted persons might be really guilty, there
was too much reason given to suspect the evidence. I am the
more inclined to suspect there was a good deal of corruption and
iniquity in the methods of gaining the indictments, because I find a
very remarkable memorandum made by the Marquis of
Ormonde, in his own writing, of a passage in the Council on
April 23, 1643. There was then a letter read at the Board,
from a person who claimed a great merit to himself in getting
some hundreds of gentlemen indicted, and the rather for that
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD,
37
he had laid out sums of money to procure witnesses to give
evidence to a jury for the finding those indictments. This
was an intimate friend of Sir William Parson's, and might very
well know that such methods would be approved by him.”
The trade in affidavits had begun in 1642, a few months
after the insurrection broke out. In the following year, when
Ormonde read this letter, there was a perfect deluge of oaths;
and the business went on very briskly for several years, until
Sir William Petty, who longed to get at the Ormonde estates
themselves, used a remarkable expression, as we read in the
same Carte-
"Sir William Petty bragged that he had got witnesses who
would have sworn through a three-inch board to evict the
Duke."
It may perhaps be thought very harsh to blame too much
these poor, hard-working swearers. If our good Protestants,
driven out of house and home by "the rebels," and, finding
that there was a demand for oaths, put their imaginations to
the rack, to invent the most horrible tales-the more ghastly
the higher price-and hawked them in Dublin to noble lords
and honourable gentlemen who would buy, is a forlorn
Protestant, who has been stripped bare, to be grudged even
the chance of selling his naked soul?
Many of the swearers, indeed, received no cash in hand,
but were sure of higher reward; which was the case of Dean
Maxwell and other parsons. But, in dealing with the whole
mass of evidence, it is curious to observe what caution and
discrimination the Historian has shown. He names but two of
the swearers. Dean Maxwell and one Adam Clover, and in
constructing his general narrative of the atrocities, never hints
that most of them are related on hearsay; and he omits alto-
gether those which contain manifest impossibilities, and true
Protestant miracles, and especially the ghosts.
In the last chapter I mentioned the miracle of the floating
corpses on the river at Belturbet, that, after lying drowned six
weeks, came up and swam against the stream up to the very
bridge, at the moment when Maelmorra O'Reilly entered the
village by that bridge. They came up to confront and accuse
him of their murder-as a certain person was "credibly in-
formed:" for, in fact, O'Reilly had still an estate in Cavan;
38
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
and it was this estate which was guilty of the murder. But
these swimming corpses did not speak, in which respect they
fall short of the spectres of the Bann. It was said, and
repeated several times in depositions, that, "about the 20th of
December," (for they seldom give us dates at all, and then in
a very loose way,) "the rebels" drowned one hundred and
eighty Protestants in the Bann, at Portadown bridge; that
this was followed by other noyades at the same place, week
after week, until, as Dean Maxwell computes, there were over
a thousand Protestants drowned there. The widow, Catherine
Cooke, not only swears to this, but adds in her affidavit this
ghastly fact-
“And that, about nine days afterwards, she saw a vision or
spirit, in the shape of a man, as she apprehended, that appeared
in that river, in the place of the drowning, bolt upright, breast-
high, with hands lifted up, and stood in that posture there, until
the latter end of Lent next following; about which time, some
of the English army marching in those parts, whereof her
husband was one (as he and they confidently told this deponent),
saw that spirit or vision standing upright, and in the posture
aforementioned; but, after that time, the said spirit or vision
vanished, and appeared no more, that she knoweth."
This was not sworn until the 24th of February, 1643, when
there was a most urgent demand, and good price, for the most
frightful oaths. Other witnesses had a still more inventive
imagination; and Elizabeth Price, of Armagh, swears that, on
a certain day-
"She went unto the bridge aforesaid, about twilight in the
evening; then and there, upon a sudden, appeared unto them a
vision or spirit, assuming the shape of a woman, waist-high,
upright in the water, often repeating the word, Revenge!
Revenge! Revenge! whereat this deponent, and the rest,
being put into an amazement and affright, walked from the
place."
There are five or six other deponents who swear to these
shrieking apparitions; but it is time to come to Dean Maxwell,
afterwards bishop, that consecrated, anointed and mitred
perjurer, whose long affidavit is relied upon with the greatest
confidence by Borlase and Temple, and is, therefore, cited by
Froude, as a main part of his authorities, but without giving
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
39
So it is now necessary to state
any of the Dean's very words.
what this reverend divine swore to.
This affidavit was sworn on August 22nd, 1642, ten months
after the insurrection began. The first notable thing in it is
the extraordinary habit which "the rebels" had, whenever
they had cut a good many throats anywhere, to come running
to this Protestant divine to tell him their exploits-
"Deponent saith, That the rebels themselves told him, this
deponent, that they murdered nine hundred and fifty-four in
one morning, in the county of Antrim; and that, besides
them, they supposed they killed above eleven or twelve hundred
more in that county; they told him likewise, that Colonel Brian
O'Neill killed about a thousand in the county of Down, besides
three hundred killed near Killeleigh, and many hundreds, both
before and after, in both these counties."
It is even more strange, to find that Sir Phelim O'Neill
himself, the very head and front of the "Massacre," whenever
he had slaughtered a good herd of Protestants, always made.
a confidant of our amiable Dean-
C
1
“That he heard Sir Phelim likewise report, that he killed six
hundred English at Garvagh, in the county of Derry; and
that he had left neither man, woman, nor child alive in the
barony of Munterlony, in the county of Tyrone, and betwixt
Armagh and the Newry, in the several plantations and lands
of Sir Archibald Atcheson, John Hamilton, Esq., the Lord
Caulfield, and the Lord Mountnorris; and saith also, that there
were above two thousand of the British murdered for the
most part in their own houses, whereof he was informed by a
Scotsman, who was in those parts with Sir Phelim, and saw
their houses filled with their dead bodies. In the Glenwood,
towards Dromore, there were slaughtered, as the rebels told the
deponent, upwards of twelve thousand in all, who were all killed in
their flight to the county of Down. The numbers of the
people drowned at the bridge of Portadown are diversely
reported, according as men staid among the rebels. This
deponent, who staid as long as any, and had better intelligence
than most of the English amongst them, and best reason to
know the truth, saith, There were (by their own report) one
hundred and ninety drowned with Mr Fullerton; at another
time they threw one hundred and forty over the said bridge;
40
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
at another time, thirty-six or thirty-seven; and so continued
drowning more or fewer, for seven or eight weeks, so as the
fewest which can be supposed there to have perished must
needs be above one thousand, besides as many more drowned
between that bridge and the great lough of Montjoy, besides
those that perished by the sword, fire, and famine, in Coubrasil
(Clanbrassil), and the English plantations adjacent; which, in
regard there escaped not three hundred out of all these
quarters, must needs amount to many thousands.
"And further saith that he knew one boy that dwelt near
unto himself, and not exceeding fourteen years of age, who
killed, at Kinnaird, in one night, fifteen able strong men with
his skein, they being disarmed, and most of their feet in the
stocks."
The reader must remark that this hard-swearing divine
does not affirm any of the above matters as of his own know-
ledge, until he comes to the wicked boy. About this there
can be no mistake, for he knew the boy; not that he actu-
ally saw the bad boy kill those fifteen able strong men, but per-
haps some frightened woman told some other woman, who
told the Dean; or probably some of the "rebels" themselves
narrated the story to him, for these rebels appear to have had
a certain malicious pleasure in "taking a rise out of" the
Dean, to use a vulgar Irish expression.
But the reader is not to imagine that the Dean was not
himself an eye-witness of anything at all; indeed he was so,
for he saw, like Moses and the Israelites, a pillar of fire, and
he remarked the disloyal silence of the dogs and cocks, as
follows:-
"And the deponent further saith, That the first three days
and nights of this present rebellion, viz., October, 23, 24, and
25, it was generally observed that no cock crew, or any dog was
heard to bark, no not when the rebels came in great multitudes unto
the Protestants' houses by night to rob and murder them; and about
three or four nights before the six and fifty persons were taken
out of the deponent's house and drowned, and amongst those
the deponent's brother, Lieutenant James Maxwell, in the dark
of the moon, about one of the clock at night, a light was
observed, in manner of a long pillar, to shine for a long way
through the air, and refracted upon the north gable of the house.
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
41
It gave so great a light, about an hour together, that divers of
the watch read both letters and books of a very small character
thereby. The former the deponent knoweth to be most true,
both by his own experience, and the general observation of as
many as the deponent met with in the county Armagh. The
latter was seen by all those of the deponent's family, and
besides by many of his Irish guard."
The zealous divine is next happily enabled to expose a
most cunning device of "the rebels," for the purpose of con-
cealing the extent of the carnage they had committed, and to
make people believe that, after all, they had only assassinated
one hundred and fifty-four thousand (out of 20,000 Protestants
in Ulster) within three or four months.
""
And further saith, That it was credibly told him, that the
rebels, lest they should hereafter be charged with more murders
than they had committed, commanded their priests to bring in a
true account of them; and that the persons so slaughtered,
whether in Ulster or the whole kingdom, the deponent durst
not inquire, in March last, amounted unto one hundred and
fifty-four thousand.”
We shall see this monstrous fable repeated by others,
adopted without scruple by Sir John Temple, embodied in a
letter to the king from the Lords of the Council at Dublin (of
whom Temple was one).
"They murdered, up to the end of March last, of men,
women, and children, 154,000, as is acknowledged by the
priests appointed to collect their numbers."
Of course, Mr Froude eagerly repeated this story, and
dares to say that, if there was any exaggeration in the
numbers, "the Catholic priests were responsible." But the
most singular circumstance is, that nobody ever saw these
"returns" made by the priests; nobody even knows to whom
the returns were made, nor where they were preserved. They
were important documents decidedly, and deserved to be kept
in some safe place of deposit; yet, even this diligent Historian,
with all his painstaking researches, could never get any
glimpse of them. There never were any such returns; and it
is, beyond measure, imprudent at this day to cite such a tale;
but it served its calumnious purpose then, and is reproduced as
fresh as ever to serve the same purpose now.
42
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
It would be a pity to dismiss so soon the testimony of the
devout Dean; his affidavit continues——
"He might add to these many thousands more; but the
diary which he, the deponent, wrote, among the rebels, being
burned with his house, books, and all his papers, he referreth
himself to the number in gross, which the rebels themselves
have, upon inquiry, found out and acknowledged, which, not-
withstanding, will come short of all that have been murdered
in Ireland, there being above one hundred and fifty and four
thousand now wanting of the British within the very precinct
of Ulster. And the deponent further saith, that it was
common table-talk amongst the rebels that the ghosts of Mr
William Fullerton, Timothy Jephes, and the most of those
who were thrown over Portadown bridge, were daily and
nightly seen to walk upon the river, sometimes singing of
psalms, sometimes brandishing of naked swords, and some-
times screeching in the most hideous and fearful manner.
The deponent did not believe the same at first, and yet is
doubtful whether to believe it or not; but saith that divers
of the rebels assured him that they themselves did dwell
near to the said river, and being daily frighted with these
apparitions (but especially with their horrible screeching) were,
in conclusion, forced to remove further into the country. Their
own priests and friars could not deny the truth thereof; but as
oft as it was by deponent objected unto them, they said, that
it was but a cunning sleight of the devil to hinder this great
work of propagating the Catholic religion, and killing of
heretics; or that it was wrought by witchcraft. The deponent
himself lived within thirteen miles of the bridge, and never
heard any man so much as doubt of the truth thereof; howso-
ever the deponent obligeth no man's faith, in regard he saw it
not with his own eyes; otherwise he had as much certainty as
'morally could be required of such a matter."
The Dean, you observe, "obligeth no man's faith," except
in such cases as the pillar of fire, and the silent Papist dogs
and cocks, and the bad boy, whom he knew.
Many readers may now begin to be of opinion that they
have had enough of Froude's forty folios of abominations; but
I must give those readers still another dose of the "eternal
witness of blood;"-for let it not be forgotten that these docu-
•
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
43
ments form the whole foundation for the superstructure raised
by Temple, Borlase, Leland, and Froude, and the whole justi-
fication for the policy of England in Ireland during these last
two hundred years. The record must not be dismissed too
lightly in justice to the First Living Historian. I had thought
it was exploded long ago; but now that this illustrious person
has taken his stand upon it, and not only rested upon it his
own credit as a historian, but also the whole subsequent policy
of his country in relation to my country, there is a real neces-
sity of probing it to the bottom and letting the light through
it. Dean Maxwell's discourse-the most fructifying sermon
that divine ever preached in his life, for it placed upon his
head a bloody mitre, encircled by a black aureole of perjury-
has now been sufficiently exposed, though far from completely.
Nothing would be easier, if the task were not so revolting,
than to disgust all decent people with minute narratives of
most grotesque obscenity, and cruelty more ingeniously horrible
than ever entered into the head of an Iroquois ; but the reader
must be content with a few samples of the tamer sort. It will
be observed that the deponents who swear to the horrid facts
were in general mercifully dispensed from the pain of seeing
them with their own eyes. Here is a hideous matter which
somebody in Kilkenny told Mr William Lucas-"taking a
rise"
out of William, as Kilkenny fellows are too apt to
do:
"William Lucas, of the city of Kilkenny, deposeth, That
although he lived in the town till about five or six weeks past,
in which time, he is assured, divers murders and cruel acts
were committed, yet he durst not go abroad to see any of
them; but he doth confidently believe that the rebels having
brought seven Protestants' heads, whereof one was the head
of Mr Bingham, a minister, they did then and there, as
triumphs of their victories, set them upon the market-cross on
a market day; and that the rebels slashed, stabbed, and
mangled those heads; put a gag, or carrot, in the said Mr
Bingham's mouth, slit up his cheeks to his ears, laying a leaf
of a Bible before him, and bid him preach, for his mouth was
wide enough; and, after they had solaced themselves, threw
those heads into a hole in St James's Green. Jurat. August
16, 1643."
44
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
:
Some of Mr Froude's general statements, as I have before
shown, are accurately confirmed by affidavit upon affidavit. If
anybody doubts that "the wicked rebels" did really burn
women and children in a house, and cut them to pieces if they
tried to come out, let that doubter only read what an unknown
woman, without a name, did absolutely tell the Widow
Stanhaw:
"Christian Stanhaw, the relict of Henry Stanhaw, late of
the county of Armagh, esquire, deposeth, That a woman that
formerly lived near Laugale, absolutely informed this deponent
that the rebels enforced a great number of Protestants, men,
women, and children into a house, which they set on fire pur-
posely to burn them, as they did; and still as any of them
offered to come out to shun the fire, the wicked rebels, with
scythes, which they had in their hands, cut them to pieces,
and cast them into the fire, and burned them with the rest.
Jurat. July 23, 1642."
Poor Mrs Jane Stewart, residing in the town of Sligo, had,
on a certain day, the good luck to be confined to her bed by
sickness; and a piece of rare good fortune it was for Jane, see-
ing she was thus saved from the fate decreed to all the Pro-
testants of that quiet town, and preserved alive to contribute
her chapter to the "eternal witness of blood." She deposeth
and saith-
"All the men, women, and children of the British that then
could be found within the same town (saving this deponent,
who was so sick that she could not stir) were summoned to
go into the gaol, as many as could be met with, all were
carried and put into the gaol, where, about twelve o'clock in
the night, they were stripped stark naked, and after most of
them were cruelly and barbarously murdered with swords,
axes, and skeins, and particularly by two butchers, named
James Buts and Robert Buts, of Sligo, who murdered many of
them; wherein also were actors, Charles O'Connor, the friar,
and Hugh O'Connor aforenamed, brother to the said Teigue
O'Connor, Kedagh O'Hart, labourer, Richard Walsh, and
Thomas Walsh, the one the jailer the other a butcher, and
divers others whom she cannot name, and saith that above
thirty of the British which were so put into the gaol, were
then and there murdered; besides Robert Gumble, then Pro-
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
45
vost of the said town of Sligo, Edward Nusham, and Edward
Mercer, who were wounded and left for dead amongst the rest,
and Joe Stewart, this deponent's son, which four being the
next day found alive, yet all besmeared with blood, were
spared to live. All which particulars the deponent was
credibly told by those that escaped, and by her Irish ser-
vants and others of the town, and further saith, that on the
said sixth day of January, there were murdered in the streets
of the town of Sligo these British Protestants following,
namely, William Shiels and John Shiels, his son, &c., and
that they of the Irish that came to bury them stood up to
the mid-leg in the blood and brains of those that were so
murdered, who were carried out, and cast into a pit digged
for that purpose in the garden of Mr Ricrofts, minister of
Sligo."
Poor Jane Stewart, lying on her sick-bed, did not see any-
thing of it herself, but I think she had bad dreams.
Why should I wade any more through all this blood and
brains? The reader must be weary of it, if not sick. Let it
be sufficient to say that folio after folio, with Jurat, Jurat
upon the pages, is full charged and reeking with the same
kind of abomination. By far the greater part of the deposi-
tions are sworn upon hearsay, yet now and then a man comes
boldly up and swears that he saw dreadful things with his
own eyes. For example:-
"James Geare, of the county of Monaghan, deposeth, That
the rebels at Clownes murdered one James Netterville, proctor
to the minister there, who, although he was diversely wounded,
his belly ripped up, and his entrails taken out, and laid above
a yard from him, yet he bled not at all until they lifted him
up, and carried him away, at which this deponent being an
eye-witness, much wondered; and thus barbarously they used
him, after they had drawn him to go to Mass with them."
Another saw an "Irish rebel" make three passes with his
drawn sword point-blank into the body of a woman, she with
hands clasped defying him to hurt her unless God permitted
him, and accordingly the sword never grazed her skin, and
the wicked rebel walked off much discomfited, and all the
on-lookers mightily marvelled. Yet another swearer tells how
the "rebels" took a Scotchman (they seldom have any names,
46
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
!
neither the rebels nor victims), and having cut open his body to
get at his "small guts," they did nail the end of said small
guts to a tree, and then whipped the Scotchman round and
round the tree, until all that intestine was drawn out and
wound neatly round the trunk, then whipped him back again
till it was unwound, and all this, as they said, to find out
whether a Scotchman's gut or a dog's is the longer.
We have seen that the Historian scarcely names one of the
swearers, except Dean Maxwell, whose testimony is the rock
and strong tower to our Protestant interest; that he never
gives any of the words of the swearers, and carefully omits
any allusion to ghosts and miracles; but in one instance he has
actually named another witness, Adam Clover, of the county
Cavan, and gives him as authority for an act of cruelty perpe-
trated by three Irishwomen, who stripped a Protestant woman
naked at the time of her child-birth, and left her and her child
to die. I am delighted to find that he knows Adam Clover,
but why not give us a little more of what Adam saw with his
own eyes-for Adam was a good swearer. Why does our
Historian withhold from his admiring readers such a choice
horror as that which follows. Now Adam Clover deposeth
and saith-
"That he observed thirty persons to be barbarously murdered,
and about 150 more cruelly wounded, so that traces of blood,
issuing from them, lay upon the high road for twelve miles
together; and many very young children were left and perished
by the way, to the number of sixty or thereabouts.”
Mr Froude's friend Adam does not say where he observed
all this, nor on what road, nor between what towns, nor by
whom, nor upon whom the murders and other cruelties were
committed. At any rate we see here an example of the man-
ner in which this great Historian manipulates his authorities,
presenting only those particulars which he thinks may go
down, with credulous people, and suppressing the rest
One blunder, however, he has made, in calling attention at
all to the atrocious cruelties charged in these oaths against
Irishmen and Irishwomen, as perpetrated upon helpless women
and children of another nationality. At no time in their his-
tory have the Irish-our proud, fierce, generous Irish-been
capable of cruelty to women and children, no, nor to the
GN
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
47
defenceless men.
If Froude wants to tell of massacres, let
him consult the annals of his own country; let him go back to
St Brice's day, 1002, at cockcrow in the morning, and feed full
on horrors; or let him tell how the same Saxon slaves, who
massacred their Danish masters on St Brice's day, afterwards
formed a plot to massacre their French masters in the time of
William the Conqueror; or let him turn his eyes a moment to
the wild valley of Glencoe, and tell how King William's Pro-
testant soldiers knew how to deal with women and infants.
Mr Froude is right in saying that England and Ireland will
never arrive at a good understanding until the business of the
"massacre" (that turning point in history) shall have been
fully cleared up. It is true, but he has not cleared it up; 、nor
was that his intention. The man's idea has been that the
public would take his very general account of the matter, and
rest upon his authority for those other authorities which ought
to support him. He never was more mistaken in his life; and
I shall be much deceived if the examination of that portion of
Irish history, an examination which is now sure to go on, does
not end in the gibbeting of Froude on high, as the most im-
moral of historic impostors.
My next chapter will finish his delinquencies as to the
massacres," and I shall afterwards have to show that, in
compiling the history subsequent to that, he has proved, him-
self even more recklessly and desperately depraved.
݂ܵܝ
48
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
CHAPTER V.
;
TOO MUCH FROUDE.
SOME readers, by this time, may be disposed to say, we have
enough of Froude; he is already a notoriously convicted
impostor, and no historian; and it is making too much of him
to keep pursuing him in this way. Certainly, it is making too
much of Froude himself, whose literary pretensions I estimate
very low, and whose historic merits are far less than nothing.
He composes fiction in a picturesque style; and ought to have
confined himself to that species of composition. He could
match Mrs Emma Southworth, or our graphic fellow-country-
man, Captain Mayne Reid. If he would contribute a striking
tale of horror to the New-York Weekly Fee-Faw, he could
command more per column than ever did Sylvanus Cobb; but
he had no call to the writing of history. However, it still
seems needful to expose a little more of his "misdealing," as
Prendergast mildly terms it, in the matter of the great
"Massacre" of 1641.
"You, who would form an independent opinion on the
matter, I would advise to read (whatever else you read) Sir
John Temple's History of the Rebellion, and Dr Borlase's
History of it. Temple was, as I said, an eye-witness.
Borlase's book contains, in the appendix, large selections from
the evidence taken on oath before the Commissioners at
Dublin."
This is from the impostor's last lecture, in reply to Father
Burke. His main authority for the whole story is still Temple;
for Borlase is but a reproduction of Temple's History, and
they are both founded wholly upon the famous Depositions.
In this passage, then, as well as in his new book, Froude
commits himself and his readers entirely to the testimony of
į
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
49
the eloquent Master of the Rolls; and he does not whisper one
hint of the fact, that Sir John Temple himself, a few years
later, tried to suppress that book. Froude knows, of course,
(for what is there that he does not know?)-but thinks his
readers may not have met with the published "Letters of his
Excellency Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland." It is no abstruse State-paper pigeon-hole I refer
him to; the book was printed in London, 1770, a fair quarto;
and it stands upon the shelves of all historic libraries; and we
learn from it, that in the year 1674 Lord Essex was soliciting
from the English Government a considerable grant for Temple
-five hundred pounds a year, "on the forfeited estates."
And the Ministry seems to have made the republication of
Temple's History an objection against the grant, which objec-
tion Lord Essex, on the part of his friend, thus endeavours to
remove-
()
EXTRACT OF
OF A LETTER FROM THE EARL OF ESSEX,
LORD-LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND, TO MR SECRETARY
COVENTRY:-
"I am to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 22nd of
December, wherein you mention a book that was newly pub-
lished, concerning the cruelties committed in Ireland, at the
beginning of the late war. Upon further inquiry, I find Sir J.
Temple, Master of the Rolls here, author of that book, was
this last year sent to by several stationers of London, to have
his consent to the printing thereof. But he assures me that he
utterly denies it; and whoever printed it, did it without his
knowledge. Thus much I thought fit to add to what I
formerly said upon this occasion, that I might do this gentle-
man right, in case it was suspected he had any share in pub-
lishing this new edition."
"He utterly denied it; " that is, did not absolutely deny
that he had written and published the book, but only denied
that he had given permission to any stationers to reprint the
offensive thing; and his friend Lord Essex pleads this in order
"to do the gentleman right." In fact the grant of an annuity
was made; poor Sir John Temple never had enough. He
was already an "Adventurer under the Parliamentary
arrangement for dividing the confiscated lands; he had in-
""
D
50
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
vested money in the "Massacre," and I find his name
amongst the subscribers to the fund of the "gentlemen adven-
turers," but he always wanted more, more, being the son of a
horse-leech's daughter, and he got more and more. Now,
some innocent reader, greener than the rest, will say, well,
at least the poor man was ashamed at last of his naughty
book, and endeavoured to make people forget it. Alas! no,
he was not ashamed; but the Restoration had occurred in the
meantime; the Stuarts had come back; Charles II. was
King; about the Court there was supposed to be much Papistry,
and a hard-working Protestant feared that his former zealous
labours in doing "the work of the Lord" might not meet
with such recognition and encouragement as they were assured
of under the godly government of the Lord Protector.
But Temple's abandonment and repudiation of his nasty
work does not suit Froude at all. Froude has no idea of
permitting a man who has laid such a fine cockatrice egg to
fling it aside to rot; no, he (Froude) will pick up that egg,
warm it, sit on it, hoping to hatch it into a venomous brood.
It is true the egg is long ago rotten, and even we, Protestants,
have noses, which we much hold when things grow too fætid.
So much for Temple. "Read Temple," says Froude,
"whatever else you read, you who would form an independent
opinion."
The Doctor is, perhaps, next after Temple, the favourite
authority relied upon by our Impostor-Historian; although, in
citing the Doctor at all, Froude feels that he is making a too
great concession to Irish susceptibilities. From Temple's
account of 154,000 Protestants, whose throats were cut in
Ulster alone, the Doctor, in his estimate, subtracts 116,000,
and Petty is mentioned by Froude as an authority not likely to
be unfavourable to the Irish; so much he claims for him in
one of his lectures, and in his book he terms that clever
Doctor" a cool-headed, sceptical sort of man," whose compu-
tation is surely not excessive! Cool-headed! well, this is
true; a cooler head, or a cooler hand, did not appear in those
days within the four seas of Ireland than Doctor Petty. The
value of him, as an "authority," might, perhaps, be questioned,
for at the time of the alleged massacre he was a boy; had
never been in Ireland at all; was at that time learning his
""
{
(6
1
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
51
trade, that of a carpenter, in the city of Caen, in France, and
it was only in the track of Cromwell's army that he took up
his empty carpet-bag, and went to make his fortune in Ireland.
A biographical sketch of this extraordinary person was written
and published about six months ago-before there was any
word of Froude's Lectures or History-by a citizen of
Brooklyn-not Mr Meline, but another citizen, whose name is
Major Muskerry-from which sketch I may venture to give
an extract or two altogether appropriate in this place, and let
the reader be assured that the career of Doctor Sir William is
worth some study, as that of the most successful land-pirate—
for a private adventurer-and most voracious land-shark
who ever appeared in Western Europe. The Doctor is autho-
rity for most of his story himself; but here we cite the words
of Major Muskerry:-
"Quitting Caen in 1643, when he was twenty years old,
he spent a little time in England, and then, as the war had
checked the industries of the country, he voyaged again and
spent three years in France and the Netherlands. Here he
studied medicine, and helped his younger brother, Anthony,
in his schooling, their father being now dead. He was not
fond of explaining how he managed to get along during these
years. But he mentions that when he returned to England
with his brother, he had saved seventy pounds beyond his ex-
penses. He must have carried on some kind of peddlery, or
perhaps acted as agent in the sale of English cloth. He was a
man of shifts, and must have had severe experiences, for he
told his friend Aubrey that he once lived for a week in Paris
on twopence worth of walnuts-"bread at discretion" being
beyond his means. Aubrey used to say he suspected Petty
had been put into a French prison for something. And it is
very likely the young trafficker ran into somebody's debt, and
so lost his liberty for a time, in the good old feudal fashion.
"While he was in Paris, Petty became acquainted with
Hobbes, the philosopher, and studied the Anatomy of
Vesalius' along with him, at the same time drawing the dia-
grams of a treatise on optics, which that old 'Leviathan' was
then writing. In 1646, Petty returned to England. He then
carried his French learning to Oxford, where it was recog-
nized; and in three years he got his degree of M.D. at that
ነ
Y
52
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
College. He was also admitted into the London College of
Physicians."
There was nothing that Petty could not learn, if there was
money in it; and he spent some years as a projector and an
inventor; but without distinguished success, until, in a happy
hour, he bethought him of the mighty spoils in Ireland, which
the massacre had placed within the reach of every God-fearing
Englishman who would invest a little money in it, and "seek
the Lord" with his whole heart. Here follows some more
from his Brooklyn biographer-
"But there was another great field of effort and enterprise
now opened before the eyes of Dr Petty-the field of Ireland.
Cromwell had beaten down the Irish Confederation, and the
English Parliament was arranging the plan of driving the
native Irish out of three provinces of Ireland into Connaught.
Ten thousand English adventurers seized their carpet-bags,
and swarmed into the confiscated island. Among these was
Dr Petty, one of the ablest brains ever exercised over the area
of a conquered country. He got himself appointed at once to
an Irish office of high character-that of Physician to the
Army in Ireland. He landed at Waterford in September, 1652.
He himself records that he was worth about £500 when he
came to Ireland. His biography is composed in a great mea-
sure from notices left by himself, and he repeatedly mentions
the sums in his possession at the several crises of his life, as
if they were the chief points of interest. But the most remark-
able part of the business is that these notices occur in his will
written at the end of his life. He mixes biography and be-
quests together, as if he meant to save space and time, and
show himself an economist to the last. It is certainly one of
the most singular wills on record, exhibiting some of the most
enlightened ideas of social polity, jumbled with the penurious
apologies of a genuine mammon-scraper familiar with much of
the sharp practice of his time. But his intimations are very
brief, and the story of his acquisitions was one he would not
care to tell at any length, very probably. He slurs things
over, like Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork.
"He tells enough, however, to show that this gathering of
Irish property were large and rapid. He says he was ap-
pointed to survey the Irish estates, and in this way made
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
53
C
£9000, which sum, with other smaller items, including salaries
as Doctor and as Clerk of the Council of Dublin, enabled him
to purchase land at a time when men bought as much land
for ten shillings as in 1685 yielded the same amount per
annum.' Aubrey says his lands brought in a rental of £18,000;
which would be about £40,000, and over, at the present day,
say 200,000 dols."
66
The Doctor was returned to Parliament (Richard Cromwell's
Parliament) in 1658. A certain Jerome Sankey was a member
of the same Parliament, who was a large "adventurer” in
Ireland upon the confiscated estates, as well as Petty, but who
had been overreached by the smart Doctor and his "Ring" in
the matter of land-grabbing. This is not wonderful; the
Doctor as Surveyor had many chances; and as he was relied
upon for "setting out" lands for whole regiments and brigades,
he had endless opportunities of buying up for little or nothing
estates of great value. The Doctor had surveys made, and all
the fieldwork done by private soldiers instructed by himself;
hardy men," says Prendergast, "fittest to ruffle with the
rude spirits they were like to encounter, who might not see
without a grudge their ancient inheritance, the only support of
their wives and children, measured out before their eyes for
strangers to occupy; and they must often, when at work, be
in danger of a surprise from Tories." In fact, many of them
were surprised and captured, and lost their ears, as tithe-
proctors and bailiffs did in late years; but, on the whole,
Doctor Sir William and his friends had not only the large dis-
cretion which the survey gave them, but could, very often,
when some Cromwellian officer or soldier came to see his lot,
gravely show him a few leagues of quaking black bog, and the
poor fellow instantly offered to sell his estate for a horse to
ride away upon; so that the county Meath tradition about the
"White Horse of the Peppers" was not only true in fact, but
was only a sample of many bargains in landed estate which
took place in those days, under the prudent administration of
the Doctor. In short, he had so many advantages over his
brethren of the carpet-bag, that Sir Jerome Sankey could
stand it no longer. Especially there was the case of some very
fine lands, the Liberties of Limerick. One Capt. Winkworth,
a prayerful officer of the Protector's army, had obtained an
•
54
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
C
C
order for this coveted district; at least the Captain thought his
order covered that place, and so he presented his credentials to
the Doctor, as Surveyor-General, who told him those lands
were "reserved." This forms one of the many charges
brought by Sir Jerome against the Doctor in his speech in
Parliament. "Why, then, Mr Speaker (said Sir Jerome)
there's Captain Winkworth; Captain Winkworth came with an
order for the Liberties of Limerick; but the Doctor said:
Captain, will you sell? Will you sell?' 'No,' said the
Captain, it is the price of my blood.' Then said the Doctor,
''Tis bravely said. Why, then, my noble Captain, the Liber-
ties of Limerick are meat for your master, meaning the Lord
Deputy,'" and so forth. In short, the Doctor was bound to
give the best things within his own "Ring."
Ring." But Petty says
that Sankey's real cause of quarrel with him was that he,
Petty, "had stopped Sankey's unrighteous order for rejecting
3000 acres fallen to him by lot, and enabling him arbitrarily to
elect the same quantity in its stead, thus rejecting at his
pleasure what God had predetermined for his lot." The
Doctor retorted upon Sir Jerome with much bad language, for
he had a rough and rasping tongue, and the other carpet-
bagger challenged him. Petty accepted, and being the
challenged party, and having choice of weapons, and being
somewhat short-sighted, but a skilful carpenter, he chose
adzes, in a dark cellar; this proposal was thought too profes-
sional by the "friends" of the other carpet-bagger. It was as
if you quarrelled with the first mate of a whaling-ship, and
challenged him, and he selected for weapons harpoons, stipulat-
ing that the duel should be fought from two boats in the open
sea. The duel never in fact took place. But such a storm of
inquiry was raised, that Sir Richard Cromwell, the Lord-
Lieutenant, could not protect his physician, and the latter was
dismissed from his public employments.
I resume the narrative of Major Muskerry, citizen of
Brooklyn No. 2 :-
"Then came the flurry of 1660, when Charles II. came
back again. Petty did not grieve much for the Cromwells.
He went to see his Majesty soon after his arrival at White-
hall, and his Majesty was mightily pleased with his dis-
course' the discourse of a richer man than himself. Petty
6
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
55
،
could lend the King money, and perhaps he did. At any rate,
that menace of Parliamentary "inquiry "went off with the
Roundheads, and in 1662 Petty was made one of a Court of
Commissioners for Irish Estates, and Surveyor-General of
Ireland. He was also knighted, and on his arrival in Ireland,
was returned to the Irish Parliament for Enniscorthy. Still he
did not escape entirely scot-free. The Court of Innocents,'
which sat in the Irish capital, found that he had got much
ground that belonged to innocent Papists,' and so he dis-
gorged some of his acquisitions- great part,' he says him-
self. But he still retained an enormous property. From one
hill in Kerry it was said he could look round and see no
ground that did not belong to himself. That was the hill of
Mangerto, now spelled Mangerton-the rude old peak of the
Devil's Punch Bowl, on which, perhaps, some of my readers
have stood and looked down on the Lake of Killarney.
"Sir William Petty goes on to explain the swift rise of his
fortunes. He says he lived within his income, set up iron
works and pilchard fishing, opened lead mines and old timber.
But of course he did not tell everything, nor mention half the
advantages which his position brought to his hands. His
fortunes grew from the ruins of a thousand old Irish families
ejected from the county of Kerry, and time has only quad-
rupled the value of the territory he won for his descendants."
I need not follow the fortunes of that smart Doctor any
further. Enough to say that, when he grew rich, he bribed
one of the poor high-born but beggared Geraldine Fitzmaurices
to marry his daughter, and also to take his paltry name of
Petty. The great estate afterwards came to the present
Lansdownes, whose surname is Petty-Fitzmaurice, at the
reader's service. This last affair is a matter of no consequence;
the thing that I specially note here is that Doctor Sir William
Petty, the man in all Ireland who had most money invested
in the "massacre," who made most profit on his investment,
who had the largest interest in establishing the grand fact of
the "massacre"-that this land-pirate is palmed off upon us
by the impostor, Froude, as a witness for the said grand fact;
nay, as the most moderate witness and most favourable to
the Irish people. He cannot see more in it-this moderate
and friendly Sir William-than (say) 38,000 throats cut in the
56
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
massacre; a pretty fair and handsome massacre, a valid and
substantial massacre for history to make a turning-point of,
and for the Lansdowne estates to derive title from.
Indeed, our bold Doctor was the great administrator of the
whole Transplantation; he ran the Transplantation, and he
ran the massacre into the ground, but in the most pious and
God-fearing spirit. His own candid autobiographical notes
let us perceive, that for himself he believed neither in a God
nor in anything else, except in the value of acres of ground;
yet when he had contracted with the Government and the
army to make an accurate survey and maps of the confiscated
lands, he did not dare to begin this mighty work for the
glory of God without-but here I call in the aid of Prender-
gast-
"This great step in perfecting the scheme of plantation
was consecrated with all the forms of religion, the articles
being signed by Doctor Petty in the Council Chamber of
Dublin Castle, on the 11th of December, 1654, in the presence
of many of the chief officers of the army, after a solemn seeking
of God performed by Colonel Thomlinson, for a blessing upon
the conclusion of so great a business."
It will be remembered that in the first chapter I cited from
Froude, that passage in which he says that the Irish were
endowed by Providence with a lovely land; but that "they
had pared its forests to the stump, and left it shivering in
dampness and desolation ;" and I requested the reader to bear
that in mind. Now, the chief parer of the forests was Froude's
friend, Doctor Sir William. He knew the use of an axe right
well; and if he was disappointed in his wish to hew down Sir
Jerome Sankey in the cellar, he could, at least, fell oaks and
beeches in Kerry. Students of Irish history know, that the Irish
were never very solicitous to clear away their fine forests; and
that it was the English commanders in Elizabeth's reign who
made the first serious inroads upon those waving woods, when
they had occasion to open up passes into the Irish enemy's "fast-
nesses.' Froude knows particularly well that the successive
occupiers of "forfeited estates," who were always sensible, in
those days, of the precariousness of their tenure, always
aware that a new settlement, unsettlement, resettlement, a new
resumption," confiscation, revolution, or general bedevilment
16
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
57
of all things, might come upon them any day, thought they
could do no better than realise the value, at least, of the woods
while they had them. To get a crop of wheat a man must
plough and sow, and wait for the season; but he can cut down
and sell a tree at any time, or a hundred thousand trees. The
reason why I say "Froude knows" all this, is that the whole
process is very clearly set forth in the "Report of the Commis-
sioners appointed by the Parliament of England to take cog-
nizance of the properties that were confiscated upon the Irish
who were concerned in the Rebellion of 1688, &c." Froude
knows this Report, because it is not abstruse nor recondite;
and if it were abstruse or recondite he would then know it still
better; for he admits that he knows everything. The Com-
missioners, in section 77 of their Report, say, that "dreadful
havoc had been committed upon the woods of the proscribed;"
and they further say, Those upon whom the confiscated
lands have been bestowed, or their agents, have been so greedy
to seize upon the most trifling profits that large trees have
been cut down and sold for sixpence each." They say also,
"this destruction is still carried on in many parts of the
country." And so it continued to be carried on, not by the
Irish, but by holders of forfeited estates, until Dean Swift,
some years later, lamented that in the once well-wooded
island there was not left timber enough for housebuilding or
for shipbuilding, and that the land had a naked and dreary
appearance for want of trees. Now, it was bad enough in
these rascals to pare our forests to the stump; but this British
historical being, coming forward at the present day to complain
to the civilized world that we, the Irish, pared our forests to
the stump, might be thought to add insult to injury; and if
he means so, it is his mission.
It is in the county of Kerry chiefly that the Parliamentary
Commissioners specify the cruel havoc made in Irish woods;
and it was in the county of Kerry that Dr Sir William Petty
had his principal estates. For years the vales of Dunkerron
and Iveragh rung with the continual fall of giant oaks. There
was a good market; Spain and France were searching the
world for pipe-staves; in English dockyards there was steady
demand for shipknees; and Sir William knew exactly where
there was the best market for everything. In Ireland itself,
66
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THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
also, he set on foot ironworks, and fed the fires from his own
woods; that is, woods which were not his own, and from
which the right owners might expel him some day. There
was no source of profit, known to the commerce and traffic of
that day, in which Sir William did not bear a hand; he "took
hold" of everything that was available and saleable, after first
"seeking the Lord" in the midst of his "Ring" of Saints; for
Sir William was truly one of the elect. When he went to his
"Down survey," along with some faithful officers of the Army
of the Saints, I find an affecting narrative of a truly touching
scene, Doctor Sir William and his swaddling "Ring" upon
their marrow-bones, wrestling with the Lord, with strong
crying and tears, calling upon the Lord (stand and deliver!) to
bless the great work. Bravo! Doctor Sir William, go forward
boldly, and seize and divide this mighty spoil. You never had
such a chance in all your varied life before; there were no such
prizes in the carpenters' shops of Caen; profits upon pills in
London suburbs were nothing in comparison with the victorious
sharing of these wide vales of Munster. Yea, the gleaming of
the grapes of Ephraim is better than the clusters of Manasseh.
Go ahead, then, prosperously, and ride victorious, Oh! Doctor
for behold the earth and the fulness thereof is thine; and thy
name shall be called, not Petty, but Mahershall-hash-baz, "for
he hasteth unto the dividing of the spoil."
;
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CHAPTER VI.
EVIDENCE OF THE MASSACRE OF 1641.
THE reader can now estimate the value of the evidence for the
"Massacre" of 1641. The Reverend Ferdinando Warner, a
Protestant clergyman, gives this account of the matter :-
"It is easy enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the
relation of every Protestant historian of this rebellion."
It would be hard, indeed, upon us Protestants, if we were
compelled to support and maintain those raw-head-and-bloody-
bones histories; but fortunately there is no such compulsion
upon us.
Mr Warner was not one of the "gentlemen adven-
turers;" he expected no lands, nor money, out of the
"Massacre;" he wrote his history with the single desire to
report the truth; and although he had a horror of the
"rebellion," and of Popery and priests, we see that he felt
himself free to denounce the gory falsehood. It is true that his
researches did lead him to conclude that there were murders of
Protestants within the three or four months, to the number of
two thousand and upward; but this estimate is liable to be
more than questioned. In fact, all writers on the subject, in-
cluding even Temple and Froude, agree that the slaughter of
those Protestant colonists did not enter into the plan of the
insurrection at all, the sole object being to drive away the
intruders and resume possession of the lands so lately confis-
cated. Sir John Temple himself says:—
"It was resolved not to kill any, but where of necessity they
should be forced thereunto by opposition.'
""
And Warner says:-
"Their first intention went no farther than to strip the
English and the Protestants of their power and possessions;
and, unless forced to it by opposition, not to shed any blood.”
"Resistance," (says Leland,) "produced some bloodshed;
and, in some instances, private revenge, religious hatred, and
60
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
the suspicion of some valuable concealment, enraged the
triumphant rebels to insolence, cruelty, and murder. So far,
however, was the original scheme of the conspiracy at first
pursued, that few fell by the sword, except in open war and
assault."
A volume was published by another Protestant clergyman,
and a contemporary of the event'; which Froude notices in this
cavalier style:-
"At that time there was a Protestant parson in Ireland,
who called himself a Minister of the Word of God. He gives
his account of the whole transaction in a letter to the people of
England, begging of them to help their fellow-Protestants of
Ireland. Here are his words:-
It was the intention of the Irish to massacre all the
English. On Saturday they were to disarm them, on Sunday
to seize all their cattle and goods, and on Monday they were
to cut all the English throats. The former they executed; the
third-that is the massacre-they failed in.""
It would surely be a curious circumstance that they "failed
in" the massacre, if massacre had been their intention, seeing
that the Ulster Protestants were entirely at their mercy. But
the Historian cannot endure Protestants, like Mr Warner and
this other "6 parson," who cast a doubt over the grand fact.
A pretty" Protestant," indeed! who tries to make the "turn-
ing-point" in history turn the wrong way! A horrible,
cool-blooded massacre there was, there must have been, or
else our Protestant interest is surrendered; so the Historian
still stands upon his thirty-eight thousand mangled corpses.
Yet he tries to uphold the story by some other evidence than
that of the adventurers who had money in it.
So he gives us,
in a note, a passage from Richard Beling's Vindicia Catholico-
rum Hiberniæ. Beling was a Catholic; and the fraudulent
Historian tells us that he "half confirms, in shame, Sir Phelim
O'Neill's barbarities." He gives the passage in Beling's Latin,
and it states that O'Neill, for the sake of revenge (or retalia-
tion) did raise tumults and enact tragic scenes in some parts
of Ulster, which are the less to be commended—if the stories
are true—on the part of a man who is a Catholic. If the
stories are true, we would all say that, and without "half
confirming" the truth of them. If Sir Phelim, or his people
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61
离
​did really slaughter defenceless people, with their women and
infants, unless it were in retaliation for the like outrages
committed by the other side, every one would admit that
such conduct cannot be commended, if, as Beling says, "" si
vera referunter." In short, the Historian of the turning-point
fails entirely to produce evidence of any massacre at all, except
the evidence of men notoriously living by the said massacre.
But there was retaliation, in the course of the war. Cer-
tainly, when the sword is once drawn, retaliation in kind for
outrage committed contrary to the laws of war is not only a
right but a duty. It would have been cruelty on the part of
Sir Phelim and the cther Irish leaders, cruelty towards their
own people, if he had failed in such a case to repay slaughter
with slaughter. Even this was done with great moderation,
and to a trifling extent; nor is there to be found, I think, in.
history, another example of an insurrection, by an oppressed
and despoiled people, commenced and carried on so blood-
lessly for at least two months. Here, then, it becomes of vital
interest to the truth of history to ascertain which side began
the murdering calling for retaliation. And this carries us at
once to Island Magee.
Irish writers, as well as the constant tradition of the
country, have represented the slaughter of the peaceful, un-
armed people of Island Magee by the Scotch garrison of
Carrickfergus as the first unprovoked act of butchery. Island
Magee is a peninsula, six miles long, by one and a half in
breadth, attached to the coast of Antrim, and running north-
ward parallel to that coast, from the entrance to Carrick-
fergus Bay. It is a very fertile district, and has always
been thickly peopled. In November, 1641, it held not only
its own permanent inhabitants, but also some hundreds more
who had betaken themselves to that remote place, to live for a
time with their kindred, and avoid the troubles of the time.
The peninsula rises gradually from west to east, and its eastern
side sinks down perpendicularly to the sea in a wall of cliff,
four hundred feet high. On one fatal night, when the people
were all in their beds, a force of Munroe's soldiers, from the
garrison of Carrickfergus, issued forth in silence, and traversed
the whole peninsula, gathering the people as they went, and
goading them forward, unarmed men and half-naked women,
$62
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
1
S
with children in their arms or at their knees; and so drove
them to the brink of the steep, where a pebble dislodged from
the edge will fall into deep water; and then, Hurrah for the
Protestant Interest! One volley and a bayonet charge or two,
and the shrieking multitude was forced over. They were all
dead before they reached the water. Ferguson, himself, an
Antrim Protestant, tells the tale in some verses, describing the
escape of a man and woman to Scotland in an open boat, upon
that same night:
The midnight moon is wading deep;
The land sends off the gale;
The boat beneath the sheltering steep;
Hangs on a seaward sail;
And, leaning o'er the weather-rail,
The lovers hand in hand,
Take their last look of Innisfail;
"Farewell, doomed Ireland!
"And art thou doomed to discord still?
And shall thy sons ne'er cease
To search and struggle for thine ill?
Ne'er share thy good in peace?
Already do thy mountains feel
Avenging Heaven's ire?
Hark-hark-this is no thunder peal,
That was no lightning fire!"
It was no fire from heaven he saw,
For, far from hill and dell,
O'er Gobbin's brow the mountain flaw
Bears musket-shot, and yell,
And shouts of brutal glee, that tell
A foul and fearful tale,
While over blast and breaker swell
Thin shrieks and woman's wail.
Now fill they far the upper sky,
Now down 'mid air they go,
The frantic scream, the piteous cry,
The groan of rage and woe;
And wilder in their agony
And shriller still they grow-
Now cease they, choking suddenly;
The waves boom on below.
This is the massacre of Island Magee, and the first real
butchery of the war, as the Irish have always steadily insisted.
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63
66
Whether it befel in November, 1641, or in the ensuing
January; whether three thousand people were there murdered,
as Irish authorities allege, or only "thirty families," as Dr
Leland declares, or thirty persons, as Mr Froude tells us upon
his own authority; on all these points there is a controversy,
and, no doubt, will continue to be. Froude, following Leland,
places the incident in January, that it may appear to be an act
of retaliation for other outrages which, he says, the Irish had
been guilty of on their side. Now, Dr Leland is no authority
at all, because he was not yet born a hundred years after.
But our Historian quite complacently cites the authority of a
Dr Reid, author of a History of the Irish Presbyterians, and
who cannot allow that his Scotch clients tumbled over the cliff
more than "thirty persons," counting only the heads of
Leland's thirty families. Every detail of that business,"
says Froude," has been preserved, and can be traced to the
minutest fibre of it:" and in a note, "The particulars are
given exactly by Dr Reid." Now, I know this decent clergy-
man, a country minister dwelling in the village of Rathmelton,
Donegal county,-if he still lives. If he were to narrate to me
a fact which he saw with his own eyes, I should believe him
but who will accept him as authority for what happened about
a hundred and fifty years before he was born? If he said he
had dreamed it, or that "the spirits " told him, I should suspect
his reverence of being crazy; if he cited anything from the
folios of the swearers, I should more than suspect his good
faith. And is it not too audacious in Froude to pretend to
stop the mouth of all authority and all tradition, with his
Doctor of Donegal ?
There is no compiler of Irish history more perfectly trust-
worthy than Dr John Curry; and he has devoted a consider-
able space to an investigation of the affair of Island Magee.
I cannot hope to improve upon his remarks, nor effectively to
condense them. He says:
P
"The report that his Majesty's Protestant subjects first fell
upon, and murdered the Roman Catholics, got credit and repu-
tation, and was openly and frequently asserted, says Jones,
Bishop of Meath, in a letter to Dr Borlase, 1679. And Sir
Audley Mervin, Speaker of the House of Commons, in a public
speech to the Duke of Ormonde, in 1662, confesses, that
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64
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6
several pamphlets then swarmed to fasten the rise of this
rebellion upon the Protestants; and that they drew the first
blood.' And, indeed, whatever cruelties may be charged upon
the Irish in the prosecution of this war, 'their first intention,
we see,' says another Protestant voucher, went no further
than to strip the English and the Protestants of their power
and possessions, and, unless forced to it by opposition, not
shed any blood.' Even Temple confesses the same; for,
mentioning what mischiefs were done in the beginning of this
insurrection, 'certainly,' says he, 'that which these rebels
mainly intended at first, and most busily employed themselves
about, was the driving away the Englishmen's cattle, and
possessing themselves of their goods.'
"In a MS. journal of an officer in the King's service,
quoted by Mr Carte, wherein there is a minute and daily
account of everything that happened in the North of Ireland,
during the first weeks of the insurrection, there is not even an
insinuation of any cruelties committed by the insurgents on the
English or Protestants; although it is computed by the
journalists, that the Protestants of that Province had killed
near a thousand of the rebels in the first week or two of the
rebellion.' And on the 16th of November, 1641, 'Mr Robert
Wallbank came from the North, and informed the Irish House
of Commons, that two hundred of the people of Coleraine
fought with one thousand of the rebels, slew six of them, and
not one of themselves hurt. That in another battle, sixty of
the rebels were slain, and only two of the others hurt, none
slain.' Nor do we find, in this account, the least mention of
cruelties then committed by the Irish; but much of the success
and victory of his Majesty's Protestant subjects, as often as they
encountered them.
"It is worthy of particular notice, that a Commission of the
Lords Justices, Parsons and Borlase, dated so late as Decem-
ber 23rd, 1641, was sent down to several gentlemen in Ulster
(where it is agreed on all hands that these cruelties and out-
rages were chiefly committed), in virtue of which Commission
Temple and Borlase confess several examinations were after-
wards taken of murders committed by the rebels, and the per-
petrators of many of these murders were discovered. Yet the
Commission itself, though it authorizes these gentlemen to
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THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
65
call upon
all those who had then suffered in the rebellion, and
all the witnesses of these sufferings, to give in examinations of
the nature of them, and of every minute circumstance relating
to them, expressly and particularly specifying every other crime
usual in insurrections, and, then committed, in this, viz., plun-
der, robbery, and even traitorous words, actions, and speeches;
yet, I say, there is not a syllable mentioned of any murders,
then committed, in this Commission, nor any express power
given by it to make inquiry into them. From whence it seems
necessarily to follow, either that few or no such cruelties had
been committed by the insurgents before the 23rd of December,
1641, or that these Lords Justices deemed murders and
massacres less worthy of their notice, of being strictly inquired
after, than even traitorous words and speeches.
•
"That a great number of unoffending Irish were massacred
in Island Magee, by Scottish Puritans, about the beginning of
this insurrection, is not denied by any adverse writer that I
have met with. An apology, however, is made for it by them
all, which, even if it were grounded on fact, as I shall
presently show it is not, would be a very bad one, and seems
at least to imply a confession of the charge. These writers
pretend that this massacre was perpetrated on those harmless
people in revenge of some cruelties before committed by the
rebels on the Scots in other parts of Ulster. But as I find this
controversy has been already taken up by two able Protestant
historians, who seem to differ about the time in which that
dismal event happened, perhaps, by laying before the readers
the accounts of both, with such animadversions as naturally
arise from them, that time may be more clearly and positively
ascertained.
"A late learned and ingenious author of a history of
Ireland, has shifted off this shocking incident from November,
1641 (in which month it has been generally placed), to
January following, many weeks after horrible cruelties (as he
tells us) had been committed by the insurgents on the Scots in
the North. The Scottish soldiers,' says he, 'who had rein-
forced the garrison of Carrickfergus, were possessed of an
habitual hatred of Popery, and inflamed to an implacable detes-
tation of the Irish, by multiplied accounts of their cruelties. In
one fatal night, they issued from Carrickfergus, into an adjacent
E
66
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
district called Island Magee, where a number of the poorer
Irish resided, unoffending and untainted with the rebellion.
If we may believe one of the leaders of this party, thirty
families were assailed by them in their beds, and massacred
with calm and deliberate cruelty. 'As if,' proceeds the His-
torian, the incident were not sufficiently hideous, Popish
writers have represented it with shocking aggravations."
เ
An angry man was Sir Phelim O'Neill when he heard of
the drowning at Island Magee; but his duty to his own people
called for stern retaliation; and that some acts of this nature
were done, cannot and need not be denied. Sir Phelim was
not naturally disposed to cruelty, and had anxiously sought to
keep his men-wild as they were with their wrongs and
sufferings-within the limits prescribed at the beginning.
Yet he had to give way to some extent; and it must be true
that some Protestants were flung into the Bann river at Porta-
down, just as Catholics had been flung over the Gobbins cliffs.
I am bound to maintain, after all the examination I have
been able to give to the ghastly story, that the Irish insurrec-
tion of 1641 was notable amongst insurrections for its mildness
and humanity; and that, if the Irish were not the most gentle,
patient, and good-natured people in the whole world, their
island would long since have been a smoking wilderness of
cinders soaked in blood.
Sir William Petty, looking calmly into the whole business,
shortly after, says, with his usual coolness, that, at any rate,
"Upon the playing of this game, or match, the English won,
and had, amongst other pretences, a gamester's right at least
to their estates. As for the blood shed in the contest for
these lands, God best knows who did occasion it!" Ah! yes;
God knows; and Petty knew; but could not afford to tell; for
the title to those confiscated estates was at stake; not legally,
indeed, but morally, in the estimation of civilized mankind;
and the prosperous Doctor, having a gloriously winning hand
in that "match or game," was content to enjoy his good luck,
and leave the rest to God. The English did, indeed, win the
game, after ten years of painful struggle and carnage
for
Ireland did not sink under one blow, as Scotland did, at
Dunbar; and this philosophic Doctor was the principal carver
at the mighty feast of spoil.
The insurrection was followed
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
67
by a general war throughout the island, a war which the
Lords of the Council took care to make general, because then
the confiscations would be general also.
#
In the course of the war there were some bright days for
Ireland, and especially the day of Benburb, for the same
covenanting rascal, Munroe, who slew the poor people of
Island Magee, had the ill-luck, six years later, on a bright
June day, to look in the face of the greatest of all the
O'Neills, the magnificent Owen Roe. It is one of the shining
points in our history, gleaming through the general darkness,
on whose brightness Irish eyes love to dwell. Therefore, in
this large History of Ireland, Mr Froude takes care never to
mention how, on that bright summer day, General Munroe
marched along the northern bank of the Blackwater with a
formidable army, making no doubt that he would dislodge and
disperse the Irish chiefs and their clansmen. But he knew
little of the soldier opposed to him, an officer trained in the
French and Spanish wars, the defender of Arras against a
Marshal of France, and an O'Neill of Ulster, full of vindictive
loathing against the covenanting leader who had shed the
innocent blood of the clansmen of Tyrowen, at Newry and at
Island Magee. The whole forenoon of that memorable day
was spent in repeated attacks by Munroe's troops, which were
always steadily repulsed. O'Neill kept his men well in hand,
and especially restrained his impetuous commander of horse,
MacNeney, who burned to launch his riders upon the squadrons
of Scottish cavalry. "Wait for the sun," O'Neill said, "when
the sun begins to sink towards the west, then will the
Lord have delivered those covenanting scoundrels into
our hands." Still the assaults continued, with loss and
exhaustion on the part of the enemy, until the prudent Irish
chief, who observed the sun that day, like an astronomer, saw
that its rays were beginning to dart into the faces of the
Scots. Now, steady, rapid, advance all along the line! And
now, MacNeney, the spur in your horse's side, and the bridle
upon his mane! In a few moments down went horse and
foot, and there was no covenanting army any more, only a
howling rabble rout, flying for their lives. They had need,
for O'Neill, when he did move, was "hot upon the spur," and
Monroe and a party of officers betook themselves to ignomi-
68
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
nious flight. The General lost his hat and wig; but eastward
still he urged his horse, through the marshes of the Montiaghs,
by the southern shore of Lough Neagh, across the Bann
about the place where the ghosts were still shrieking; and,
before morning, the Protestant burghers of Lisburn were dis-
turbed by the gallop of horses ready to founder. They looked
out of window; it was only General Monroe and staff making
their entry; but the frightened shopkeepers almost thought
that they heard at the town's end the thundering hoofs of
Owen Roe's riders. Three thousand Scottish and English men
fell on that day of Benburb, and the Irish nation felt that they
had got a leader able to cope with the Lord-General Crom-
well.
As this affair of Benburb is creditable to Irish soldiership,
therefore Froude never alludes to it. The miserable Historian
is always anxiously on the watch to find some pretext for
goading our people with a taunt; and it is really wonderful to
observe how low down, and how far out of his way, he will
go to contrive a cutting and stinging gibe. For example, by
way of enforcing his favourite theory, that Irishmen require
to be used with severity, and that the more you scourge them
the more they love you, he quotes, what he calls a Hibernian
proverb, in Latin, to the effect that if you soothe and flatter an
Irishman he will stab you, but if you kick him he will be your
affectionate servant. Froude knows perfectly well that this is
a French proverb, which the proud seigneurs applied to their
serfs, and that it had no reference to Ireland at all—" Oignez
vilain; il vous poindra; poignez vilain; il vous oindra."
But our kind Historian, finding the proverb turned into a
Latin hexameter, and perceiving that Hibernicus fits the
measure, cannot resist the temptation. The Irish, according
to him, made a proverb on themselves, proclaiming their own
dastard servility. They say to all mankind in this proverb-
Do us the pleasure, good sirs, to kick us, that we may have
the gratification of kissing your honours' boots! True, this is
a small matter; so is the omission of all mention of Benburb;
so is the taunt about the Irish paring their forests; yet these
things show the vicious animus of the creature. If he cannot
be always bombarding the Irish with cannon, he, at least, can
occupy himself in pricking them with needles.
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
69
CHAPTER VII.
CLAN OLIVER"
""
Now came in the deluge of Cromwellians, who were termed by
the Irish Clan Oliver, as the invaders of Elizabeth's day had
been called sometimes Clan London, or Clan Sacsanagh. It is
not my purpose to follow Froude through all his details relating
to the Cromwellian settlement, because this is rendered un-
necessary by the admirable work of Mr Prendergast; and
Froude has himself fully admitted in one place the accuracy of
Prendergast's facts and authorities, at the same time that, in
many other passages, he makes statements of his own utterly
at variance with those facts and authorities. What is material
to point out here is, that the Historian most warmly approves
of the régime established by Cromwell in Ireland, only lamenting
that "he died too soon. Speaking of that General and his
indiscriminate slaughters of soldiers and civilians, of men,
women, and children at Drogheda and Wexford, he says,
pathetically, "Happier far would it have been for Ireland, if,
forty years later, there had been a second Cromwell before
Limerick!" It had been better, he thinks, if Sarsfield
and his men, and all the peaceful traders, and all the
heroic women of Limerick city had had their throats cut,
instead of being admitted to a Treaty. Perhaps he is right,
seeing that the Treaty was to be instantly violated. This
Historian does not mind being charged with bloodthirstiness:
on the contrary, he is flattered by it: he loves to write of
blood, and to urge on other people the duty of shedding it:
the odour of gore is grateful to his nostrils, whereas he despises
rose-water," which is Carlyle's phrase to designate any kind
of gentleness or mercy, or even ordinary good faith observed
towards Papists. Cromwell, he says with delight, did not.
66
66
·
70
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
assuredly come to Ireland "to make war with rose-water."
No, it was the genuine red liquid, venous and arterial. There
is no part of the Cromwellian system which seems to give him
such heartfelt pleasure as the treatment of the priests. Only
it was too mild, and was applied for too short a time; if the
great statesman had but lived, there would soon have been not
a single priest left to "work mischief,"—which is his way of
describing the saying of Mass.
The good Father Burke, who is so amiable towards Froude,
must be all the while aware of how it would have fared with
himself if he had lived in the time of Froude's hero. Doubtless
it is the duty of a Christian divine to love all men, even his
enemies; and it was in this sense that he said he loved Froude.
But he knows very well that in Froude's political economy, his
(Father Burke's) head is exactly of the same value as the head
of a bitch-wolf; namely, six pounds sterling of the money of
that day, equal, we may say, to eighteen pounds of to-day.
And it will not do to say that Froude estimates the goods at
that price only, in the case that Father Burke had lived in the
latter part of the eighteenth century; for he regrets, passion-
ately, the too-early relaxation of that system; wishes there
had been a Cromwell before Limerick; wishes that there were
a Cromwell for Ireland's sake now: for, while the wolves were
cleared off entirely, there are priests in Ireland still. Evidently
while the wolf-price was enough, the priest's head-money ought
to have been raised. My own estimate of the value of Father
Burke's head differs from Froude's, and is based upon another
sort of tariff; for I hold it to be worth at least five hundred
heads of the Froudes. Let nobody deceive himself, however,
by assuming that this Historian discusses these matters in a
historic spirit, as matters whose interest is long past and gone
with the changing current of events. By no means: he treats
them in the spirit of a party pamphleteer, and with an obvious
intention to act upon the present politics and passions of men.
Thus, instead of giving a word of praise to the devoted clergy
who persisted in hearing confessions and administering
Sacraments, under the imminent penalty of transportation and
of death, he never mentions those wonderful men without
ribald abuse and calumny. "Priests and dispossessed pro-
.prietors," he says, "were hiding in disguise among the tribes,
gge
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
71
making mischief when they were able." He never alludes to the
deadly risks those clergy ran in staying by their flocks. Close
as has been his inspection of documents, in public record offices,
he never found the bills duly furnished by and paid to god-
fearing troopers for their captives-"To five priests captured
in the county of Cavan and sent in"-" To two priests with
their appurtenances [namely, books and caps and stoles] sent in
by Lieutenant Wood," and so-forth, to great length: for which
see Prendergast and Curry-you need not look to the Historian
of "The English in Ireland." He cannot help, indeed, men-
tioning some of the severe measures used against the clergy;
he only affirms that not so many were transported as those who
were arrested; but nobody had said there were.
As to the people actually transported from Ireland to
Barbadoes or other colonies or plantations, he, in his last lecture,
questions Father Burke's estimate of the numbers so exiled
within a few years. He says:
"Father Burke says that Cromwell meant to exterminate-
the Irish. I distinguish again between the industrious Irish
and the idle, fighting Irish. He showed his intention towards
the peasantry a few days after his landing, for he hung two of
his own troopers for stealing a hen from an old woman.
Cromwell, says the Father, wound up the war by taking
80,000 men and shipping them to the sugar plantations of
Barbadoes. In six years, such was the cruelty, that not
twenty of them were left. Eighty thousand men, Father Burke!
and in six years not twenty left! I have read the Thurlow
Papers, where the account will be found of these shipments
to Barbadoes. I can find nothing about 80,000 men there.
When were they sent out, and how, and in what ships?"
I think, however, that Father Burke's estimate is not far
from correct; though, to be sure, 80,000 is a large round
number. But it is well known that the deportation both of
priests and of laymen, of young men and maidens, was on a
very large scale. In consequence of the great increase of
priests towards the close of the year 1665, a general arrest
by the justices of the peace was ordered; it was the sporting
season for priests, and even wolves were left comparatively at
peace for a time. "On the 3rd of May," says Prendergast,
"the governors of the respective precincts were ordered to
72
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
send them with sufficient guards from garrison to garrison to
Carrickfergus, to be there put on board such ships as should
sail with the first opportunity for the Barbadoes." Poor old
Father Paul Cashin, a very ancient and frail man, being appre-
hended at Maryborough, and sent on to Philipstown on the
way to Carrickfergus, there fell desperately sick, and was in
danger of perishing in a dungeon from want and hardship.
After months, the Commissioners ordered him an allowance of
sixpence a day; and when he should be well enough to move,
this allowance was to be continued to him during his journey
to Carrickfergus "in order to his transportation to the Bar-
badoes." It would not be much sugar Father Paul would
make after being set down there and bidden to take up the
shovel and the hoe; but the authorities thought that under a
Barbadoes planter he would at least be kept from "mischief'
-that is from Mass and Confession. The difficulty suggested
by Froude in the paragraph above cited, how and in what
ships were these 80,000 sent to Barbadoes? is not so very
serious a difficulty. The operation extended over several
years, and shipping was not so very scarce then, either in
England or in Ireland. Besides, Doctor Sir William Petty and
other adventurers were piling up all the shipyards in the
kingdom with the best of Irish timber. Still there was some
shortcoming in the tonnage available for this service, and it
cost too much, so that, on the 27th of February, 1657, the
Government referred it to the Lord-Lieutenant to consider
where the priests, then crammed into the prisons of Dublin,
might be most safely disposed of. And so they were carried
across the island, placed in boats, and flung out upon the bare
islands of Arran, in the Atlantic, and Innisbofin, off the coast
of Connemara, there to consider themselves, upon an allowance
of sixpence per day. It was when private enterprise came in
aid of the Government that no want or shipping was experi-
enced. The merchants of Bristol contracted with the Com-
missioners, not for cargoes of priests, but for young men and
marriageable girls, who would be more useful, these merchants
thought, upon their West India plantations. Ostensibly these
were to be all persons having no visible means of support,
but practically, it was a slave-hunt. Says Prendergast:-
"Messrs Sellick and Leader, Mr Robert Yeomans, Mr
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
73
Joseph Lawrence, and others, all of Bristol, were active
agents. As one instance out of many :-Captain John Vernon
was employed by the Commissioners for Ireland into England,
and contracted in their behalf with Mr David Sellick and Mr
Leader, under his hand, bearing date the 14th of September,
1653, to supply them with two hundred and fifty women of
the Irish nation above twelve years, and under the age of
forty-five; also three hundred men above twelve years of age,
and under fifty, to be found in the country within twenty miles
of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, Waterford and Wexford, to
transport them into New England. Messrs Sellick and Leader
appointed their shipping to repair to Kinsale; but Roger
Boyle, Lord Broghill (afterwards Earl of Orrery), whose name,
like that of Sir C. Coote, seems ever the prelude of woe to
the Irish, suggested that the required number of men and
women might be had from among the wanderers and persons
who had no means to get their livelihood in the county of
Cork alone. Accordingly, on the 23rd of October, 1653, he
was empowered to search for them and arrest them, and to
deliver them to Messrs Sellick and Leader, who were to be at
the charge of conducting them to the water side, and maintain-
ing them from the time they received them; and no person,
being once apprehended, was to be released, but by special
order in writing under the hand of Lord Broghill."
Many such operations took place in various parts of the
country; until this Bristol firm alone had shipped above 6400
young strong people within the desirable ages. Many a girl
of gentle birth and delicate nurture must have been seized by
those slave-dealers and hurried to the private prisons. Daniel
Connery, a gentleman of Clare County, was sentenced to
banishment for harbouring a priest in 1657. "This gentleman
had a wife and twelve children; his wife fell sick, and died in
poverty. Three of his daughters, most beautiful girls, were
transported to the West Indies, to an island called the
Barbadoes; and there, if they are alive, they are in miserable
slavery." (Morison's Threnodia: cited by Prendergast). On
the whole, taking priests and laymen together, men and
women, girls and boys, and allowing some years for the
operation, I think we may allow Father Burke's estimate to be
a fair and probable one.
བད
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THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
But the matter, and perhaps the only matter, which disquiets
and perplexes the mind of the "Historian," is the fact, that in
the midst of all these horrors, Catholic priests were not only
ministering all over the country, but coming in from France
and Spain and Rome; not only supplying the vacuum made by
transportation and by death, but keeping up steadily the need-
ful communication between the Irish Church and its head; and
not only coming, but going (both times incurring the risk of
capital punishment), and not in commodious steamships, which
did not then exist, but in small fishing luggers or schooners;
not as first-class passengers, but as men before the mast.
Archbishops worked their passage. The whole of this
strange phenomenon, which continued more than a century,
belongs to an order of facts, which never entered into the
Historian's theory of human nature. It is a factor in the
account that he can find no place for; he gives it up. Yet
Edmund Spenser, long before this day, as good a Protestant as
Froude, and an undertaker too upon Irish confiscated estates,
had at least somewhat of the poetic vision and poetic soul.
There were moods of his undertaking mind in which he could
look upon such strange beings as these priests with a species.
of awe, if not with full comprehension. He much marvels at
the zeal of these men, "which is a greate wonder to see how
they spare not to come out of Spain, from Rome and from
Remes, by long toyle and daungerous travayling hither, where
they know perill of death awayteth them, and no reward or
richesse." Mr Froude, indeed, speaks of them as engaged in
nothing else but keeping up treasonable alliances with coun-
tries at war with England, and recruiting for foreign armies.
As for their expecting no reward or richesse for such laborious
service, he would bid you tell that to Judæus Apella, or to the
horse marines!
Reward and richesse! I know the spots, within my own
part of Ireland, where venerable Archbishops hid themselves,
as it were, in a hole of the rock. In a remote part of Louth
County, near the base of the Fews mountains, is a retired
nook called Ballymascanlon. There dwelt for years, in a farm
house which would attract no attention, the Primate of Ireland
and successor of St Patrick, Bernard MacMahon, a prelate
accomplished in all the learning of his time, and assiduous in
Mrou
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
75-
the government of his archdiocese; but he moved with
danger, if not with fear, and often encountered hardships in
travelling by day and by night. His next successor, but one,
was Michael O'Reilly, and he dwelt in a cabin at Termon-
fechin, near Clogher Head, a very wild place, and greatly out
of the way, as it lay between the Great Northern Road and
the sea, and could only be found by those who searched for it.
Here he died. And if such were the toils, hardships, and
dangers of the highest ecclesiastics, we may conjecture what
kind of life awaited the simple priests who devoted themselves
to the mission; yet it was with full knowledge of all this,
with full resolution to brave all this, that many hundreds of
educated Irishmen, fresh from the colleges of Belgium or of
Spain, came to the French sea-coast at Brest or St Malo, bent
on finding some way of crossing to where their work lay.
Imagine a priest ordained at Seville or Salamanca, a gentle-
man of high old name, a man of eloquence and genius, who
has sustained disputations in the college halls on questions of
literature or theology; imagine him on the quays of Brest,
treating with the skipper of some vessel to let him work his
passage; he wears tarry breeches and a tarpaulin hat (for
disguise was generally needful); he flings himself on board,
takes his full part in all hard work, scarce feels the cold spray
and the fierce tempests; and he knows, too, that the end of it
all, for him, may be a row of sugar canes to hoe, under the
blazing sun of Barbadoes, overlooked by a broad-hatted agent
of a Bristol planter; yet he goes eagerly to meet his fate, for
he carries in his hand a sacred deposit, bears in his heart a
sacred message, and must deliver it or die. Imagine him
then springing ashore, and repairing to seek the bishop of the
diocese in some cave, or behind some hedge, but proceeding
with caution by reason of the priest-catchers and their wolf-
dogs. But Froude would say, this is the ideal priest you
have been portraying. No; it is the real priest as he existed
and acted at that day, and as he would again in the like
emergency. And is there nothing admirable in all this? Is
there not something superhuman and sublime? Ah! we
Protestants are certainly most enlightened creatures. Mr
Froude says we are the salt of the earth. We stand, each of
us, with triumphant conceit, upon the sacred and inalienable
76
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
right of private stupidity; but I should wish to see our excel-
lent Protestantism produce some fruit like this.
And not only has this Crusader no word of admiration or
commendation for the more than chivalrous bravery of the
priests who dared and defied the toil and the peril, humiliation,
transportation, and death, for the sake of feeding those flocks
which the English were shearing-not only does he pass over
in silence, or make light of, or attempt to deny, the frightful
persecutions continually inflicted upon those clergy, or hanging
over their heads, but the great leading theme of his whole
book, the thing which he most earnestly repeats is this-the
priests were never persecuted enough, except only in Crom-
well's time! Ah! "if Oliver Cromwell had but left a son like
himself," he pathetically exclaims, Ireland's lot at this day had
been happier; and it would be now as easy to find a wolf in
the island as a priest. He is very hard indeed to satisfy in
the matter of persecution; for, although the laws for making
Ireland too hot to hold a priest were constantly elaborated and
made more atrocious nearly every year for the next century
after Cromwell, still there was occasional connivance; and those
obnoxious pastors were often left unpunished, and even their
saying of Mass was often winked at, provided they committed
the offence in some very obscure place; this does not suit the
Historian at all. He wants their hearts' blood; and it was
such "mistaken leniency" on the part of the government that
made Papists so insolent that they continually rose in new in-
surrections, and even at one time (when James the Second
came to the throne) their presumption rose to such a pitch
that he tells us with disgust, "the Irish thought Ireland was
theirs."
↓
It is to be feared that the Historian, after all his researches,
fails to comprehend the exact purpose and extent of those
occasional connivances or tolerations; the purpose was to keep
up an efficient machinery for getting a hold of more and more
of the lands which were still remaining in the hands of Papists,
under secret trusts or illegal leases. The Protestant interest
could not afford to suppress the Mass, so long as any Catholic
possessed an acre of land or a good horse. If there had been
no priests, and no Catholic service could anywhere be cele-
brated, it was feared that nearly all the Catholics would con-
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
77
form; and then, where would our Protestant interest be? Our
good Protestants could no more afford to do without the Mass
than without the "massacre."
massacre." So, successive Viceroys and
Lords of Council changed their policy from time to time, either
suspending the operation of the most ferocious of the penal
laws, or enforcing them in all their horror, as political exigen-
cies for the time-being might seem to require. Mr Froude,
with his unbending Protestant honesty, must really have some
indulgence for people who, after doing the work of the Lord
so well, felt that they had not yet received their full reward; for
certain Papist Hittites, Edomites, and Amalekites, could still
be found, by means of earnest and prayerful diligence, who
were fraudulently receiving the rents and profits of their own
estates, and thus cheating honest colonists. For these Amalė-
kites it was needful to keep up a kind of secret hole-and-
corner Mass; and the army of informers who were kept in pay
might be trusted to find out who attended those useful minis-
trations. Here is the true key to the Penal Laws and to their
administration.
C
Yes: evil must come of it, as this honest being truly
apprehends. In his last lecture, by way of reply to Father
Burke, he cannot conceal his uneasiness. He says:-
46
England is afraid, however, and deeply afraid. She is afraid
of being ever driven to use again those measures of coercion
against Ireland, which have been the shame of her history."
The shame of her history, inasmuch as they were not duly
executed. But what is England afraid of now? Ireland is
very quiet, and so free from disturbance, and every sort of
crime, that many a single county in England exhibits more
murders, poisonings, burglaries, and waylayings with intent to
murder, in one year than the whole of Ireland can show.
What, then, thinks the Historian, is the provocation which is
likely to drive his countrymen to new penal laws against
Ireland? Can it be the Home Rule agitation-an agitation
which is not only perfectly legal and constitutional, but also
entirely harmless and useless? No; certainly not this. As
for the outcry some Irishmen are making, claiming that they
ought to be governed according to "Irish Ideas,"—governed
by England, neither can this disquiet their English masters
much. Their English masters know how to deal with such
*78
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
*
matters as these, by seizing on such newspapers as offend
them, and by trying the most noisy of the agitators before
packed juries? What, then, precisely, does the Historian's
ominous threat portend? What does he wish his countrymen
to do to us more? It may be that the learned and eloquent
gentleman, having lived a good deal in Ireland of late, has
observed that many industrious Irish people, grandsons and
descendants of those who were once so thoroughly stripped
bare, have gradually worked themselves into possession again
of broad estates, often in the very tribe-lands of their own
cians. Those estates were taken from their ancestors and
given to the "saints" without money and without price: the
present owners have won some of them back in the sweat of
brow and brain. Catholics, too, having been plundered of their
own Cathedrals, Churches and Abbey-lands, are now found in
possession of new and splendid churches, and of great and
beneficent religious houses. Here is a matter which is evidently
worthy of the serious consideration of us, the enlightened
Protestants; for if the earth is not our's and the fulness
thereof, we should like to know to whom it does belong?
Would not a good, prudent system of penal laws jockey those
idolatrous Papists out of all they own, even as before? And
is it any wonder that Historian Froude begins really to fear
that England may be forced to resort to the old system of
coercion once more?
Is this the explanation of his ominous menace, or is it merely,
(as one of his English critics has insisted) a general craving on
his part, "to burn or boil somebody, if only he could make up
his mind whom to boil or burn." On this last question I do
not really think the Historian labours under any doubt or
difficulty. I know whom he wishes to cook.
At any rate, it really seems that this Crusader, like many
another great man, is in advance of his age, or else behind it.
He is either above the general level of human conscience and
morals, or else below it. Either way, whether he is behind or
before, whether too high or too low, his shot has failed to
strike right between wind and water: and his crusade is a
failure.
In one other article, I shall wash my hands of our Historian;
and having washed shall slightly perfume them.
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
79
CHAPTER VIII.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN IRELAND.
THE only period-and it was a very short period-in which
Liberty of Conscience was recognized in Ireland by express
law, from the time of Henry VIII. until the reign of Queen
Victoria-the only bright moment of respite-was that in
which the Parliament of King James II. sat in Dublin. And
this was the only Parliament that ever represented the Irish
nation even unto this day. For the Parliament elected after
“Emancipation,” upon the basis of wholesale disfranchisement,
certainly did not represent Ireland; and neither has any one of
the Parliaments from that time to the present moment. That
famous Assembly was composed indifferently of Catholics and
Protestants, but Catholics in the great majority. Some
exclusive Protestant boroughs, whose Corporate authorities did
not admit a Catholic to live within their bounds, did not,
indeed, send any members. There was no representative from
Derry, nor from Coleraine. But Bandon sent two gentlemen
of the MacCarthy clan; Dublin, City and County, and the
University were represented, the County by Simon Luttrell
and Patrick Sarsfield; the City by Sir Michael Creagh, Lord
Mayor, and by Terence Dermot, Alderman; the College by
Sir John Meade and Michael Coghlan; the Borough of
Belfast by Marcus Talbot and Daniel O'Neill; Newry by
Rowland White and Rowland Savage; Down County by two
of the MacGennises. On the whole, I find in the roll of that
famous Parliament--the only genuine Parliament Ireland ever
saw-a large and liberal admixture of gentlemen of English
race and of Irish families; a list which it does one good to
read; Fitzgeralds and O'Reillys, O'Briens and Nugents,
Aylmers, Eustaces, and Archbolds. The borough of Wicklow
was represented by an O'Byrne and an O'Toole-very proper
80
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
•
members for that constituency.
Naas, in Meath, returned
Charles White and Walter, Lord Dongan, a near relative of
that Thomas Dongan (properly O'Donegan), who had been.
obliged, a year before, to resign his office as Governor of New
York; and he was the best Governor New York ever had.
There were but six or seven Protestants in the House of
Commons; but in the House of Peers we find besides the
temporal Lords four Protestant Bishops, Meath, Ossory,
Limerick, and Cork. Mr Froude counts amongst them the
Bishop "of Munster;" (I quote Scribner's edition); but there
never was any Bishop of Munster; and the Historian must
mean Dr Dopping, Bishop of Meath, who is his especial
favourite amongst all the Irish episcopacy, being in fact the
very Bishop who shortly afterwards, on the conclusion of the
Treaty of Peace, preached before the Court in Christ Church
Cathedral, on the sinfulness of observing any compacts or
treaties with Papists. The greater number of the Protestant
Peers absented themselves, as they were generally devoted
adherents to the usurper, the Prince of Orange. Substantially,
however, there was a good and respectable representation of
the Irish nation at that day.
""
This is a matter perplexing and even disgusting to the
Impostor Historian; so he passes it over very lightly. Yet
the acts of that assembly deserve to be held in remembrance a
little. One of its earliest enactments was "an Act for securing
Liberty of Conscience, and repealing such acts or clauses in
any Act of Parliament which are inconsistent with the same.
I need not here dwell upon the other measures passed by that
excellent Parliament-an Act declaring the Parliament of
England incapable of binding Ireland; an Act repealing the
unjust Navigation Laws; an Act for attainder of rebels-that
is, of persons who had borne arms against their Sovereign
King James; an Act for removing all incapacities and disa-
bilities of the natives of this kingdom, &c. For the present, it
is enough to attend to the Act for Liberty of Conscience, and
to see how the English Historian deals with that:-
"We hereby decree that it is the law of this land of Ire-
land that neither now, nor ever again, shall any man be pro-
secuted for his religion."
This looks plain enough; sounds fair and straightforward;
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
81
but the British Historian has found out the secret and malign
intention he says in his book-and it is the only notice he
takes of the Act for Liberty of Conscience :—
"In harmony with the language which James had ingeni-
ously used to advance Romanism behind principles which were
abjured in every Catholic country of Europe, laws interfering
with liberty of conscience were declared repealed."
What an artful tyrant! Not only to invent such ingenious
language, declaring that no man should be punished for his
religion, but also to impress this cunning artifice of speech
upon his Parliament in Ireland! There may be some persons
who could wish that Oliver Cromwell could have learned this
sort of ingenious language, instead of saying to General Taaffe,
who attempted to stipulate for liberty of conscience before sur-
rendering Ross:-"I meddle," said Cromwell,
" with no
man's conscience; but if, by liberty of conscience, you mean
liberty to exercise the Mass, I judge it best to use plain deal-
ing, and let you know that where the Parliament of England
has power, that will not be allowed."
And, what a blessing it would have been if the grandfather
of this same James the Second had learned, in his day, the
use of that "language" (for there was nothing in it, Mr
Froude assures us, but empty words), instead of issuing his
famous proclamation of the 4th of July, 1605, wherein he
"declared to his beloved subjects of Ireland that he would
not admit any such liberty of conscience as they were made
to expect."
Froude's account of the matter is that King James had
committed to memory certain vile, hypocritical phrases about
freedom of conscience-probably under the tuition of some
Jesuit-in order "to advance Romanism behind those prin-
ciples." What advancing of Romanism did he ever seek, either
in England or in Ireland? He did wish to be at liberty to go
to church himself, behind those principles; he wished such of
his subjects as chose to be Catholics to be free to hear Mass,
and make Confession without being fined, whipped, pilloried,
or transported! But neither he nor any Government official
in his reign, whether in England or in Ireland, ever sought to
injure, punish, or disfranchise any Protestant for not going to
Mass.
F
82
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
In fact, the thing which offends our English Historian the
most, and admonishes him to touch lightly on that whole sub-
ject, and drop it like a hot potato, is the fact that King James's
own actions, and the measures of the Parliament which he
called, and the administration of law in the High Courts of the
Kingdom, were all guided and governed by the very same in-
genious "language." Here was the infernal cunning of it.
That Jesuit who tutored the King, I daresay, thought himself
a deep schemer; but no Romish devices can escape the search-
ing probe of Froude. In his last New York lecture he says of
King James :-
"He was meditating the restoration of Popery in England,
and he took up with toleration that he might introduce Catho-
lics, under cover of it, into high offices of state, and bribe the
Protestant Nonconformists to support him."
And so he advanced the treacherous declaration for liberty
of conscience only to advance Romanism behind that principle!
And what did James the First, what did Oliver Cromwell, then
wish to advance behind those opposite principles of No liberty
of conscience? It must have been Protestantism they wanted
to advance; or, at any rate, the Protestant interest. But, after
all, what was this insidious form of words which the Jesuits
had invented for King James? Mr Froude does not give it;
but here it is :—
"KING JAMES'S SPEECH TO BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
IN IRELAND, PUBLISHED BY HIS MAJESTY'S ORDER, MAY
10TH, 1689.
"My Lords and Gentlemen,-The exemplary loyalty, which
this nation express to me, at a time when others of my subjects
so undutifully behaved themselves to me, or so basely betrayed
me; and your seconding my deputy as you did, in his bold and
resolute asserting my right, and preserving this kingdom for
me, and putting it in a posture of defence, made me resolve to
come to you, and to venture my life with you, in the defence
of your liberty and my right; and to my great satisfaction I
have not only found you ready and willing to serve me, but
that your courage has equalled your zeal. I have always been
for liberty of conscience, and against invading any man's property;
having still in my mind the saying of holy writ, 'Do as you
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
83
-
would be done by; for that is the law and the prophets.' It
was this liberty of conscience I gave which my enemies both
at home and abroad dreaded, especially when they saw that I
was resolved to have it established by law in all my dominions,
and made them set themselves up against me, though for dif-
ferent reasons, seeing that if I had once settled it, my people,
in the opinion of the one, would have been too happy, and in
the opinion of the other, too great. This argument was made
use of to persuade their own people to join with them, and too
many of my own subjects to use me as they have done; but
nothing shall ever persuade me to change my mind as to that
;
and wheresoever I am master, I design, God willing, to estab-
lish it by law, and to have no other test or distinction but that
of loyalty. I expect your concurrence in so Christian a
work, and in making effectual laws against profanings
and debauchery. I shall also most readily consent to the
making such good and wholesome laws as may be for
the general good of the nation, the improvement of trade,
and the relieving such as have been injured by the late
acts of settlement, as far forth as may be consistent with
reason, justice, and the public good of my people. And
as I shall do my part to make you happy and rich, so I make
no doubt of your assistance, by enabling me to oppose the un-
just designs of my enemies, and to make this nation flourish.
And to encourage you the more to it, you know with how
great generosity and kindness the most Christian king gave a
secure retreat to the queen, my son, and self, when we were
forced out of England, and came to seek protection and safety
in his dominions; how he embraced my interest, and gave
supplies of all sorts, as enabled me to come to you, which,
without his obliging assistance, I could not have done; this he
did at a time when he had so many and so considerable
enemies to deal with; and so still continues to do. I shall
conclude as I began, and assure you, I am as sensible as you
can desire me of the signal loyalty you have exprest to me,
and shall make it my chief study, as it always has been, tọ
make you and all my subjects happy."
Here the designing creature actually says that he had been,
at all times, for liberty of conscience; and the puzzling matter
to the Froudes is that he had been so in fact; of which one
+
..
84
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
illustration was seen, even here on Manhattan Island-such
was the malign cunning of that artful tyrant, in spreading far
and wide over the dependencies of the British crown, that
same shocking delusion of liberty of conscience.
When King James was Duke of York, in the reign of his
brother Charles, he was "Proprietary Governor" of the Pro-
vince of New York, and in the year 1682 he commissioned
Colonel Thomas Dongan, of an ancient Irish family, who had
commanded a regiment in the French service, to proceed to
New York as his Lieutenant or Resident Governor. He pro-
ceeded at once, according to his instructions, to issue his
warrants for the election of a General Assembly. This was an
auspicious beginning of his administration, as it was a conces-
sion from the Duke of New York for which the people had
long struggled. This illustrious body, consisting of the
Governor, ten Councillors, and seventeen Representatives
elected by the people, assembled in the city of New York on
the 17th of October, 1683. As he was the first, so he was the
most liberal and friendly royal Governor that presided over
the popular legislatures of New York; and the contests
between arbitrary power and popular rights, which dis-
tinguished the administration of future Governors, down to the
Revolution, did not have their origin under his administration.
The first act of this General Assembly was the framing of a
charter of liberties-the first guarantee of popular government
in the province. This noble charter ordained:
"That supreme legislative power should for ever reside in
the Governor, Council, and people, met in General Assembly;
that every freeholder and freeman might vote for Representa-
tives without restraint; that no freeman should suffer but by
the judgment of his peers, and that all trials should be by a
jury of twelve men; that no tax should be assessed, on any
pretext whatever, but by the consent of the Assembly, that no
seaman or soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants
against their will; that no martial law should exist; that no
person, professing faith in God, by Jesus Christ, should, at any
time, be in any way disquieted or questioned for any difference of
opinion in matters of religion."
So Colonel Dongan also had learned the ingenious language
which King James had been taught by that "Jesuit!"
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
85
•
There had been penal laws in force against Catholics in all
these provinces; and seeing that Governor Dongan was him-
self a Catholic, and desired the liberty of going to church
without penal consequences, just as James himself always
wished, he thought it would be no harm if the people of New
York could be prevailed upon to let one another alone on that
one matter, at least. He had a great amount of popular pre-
judice and ignorance to encounter; and there was plenty of
jealousy and ill-will against him as a "Papist;" yet as he was,
in fact, not only a very good and honourable gentleman, but
also a most zealous and efficient Governor, as all authorities
agree, he did succeed in procuring the adoption of that famous
charter. The clause assuring religious liberty was found to
hurt nobody, and people lived peaceably enough under it, until
what is called the abdication of King James, in England, and
the invasion by William of Orange. Then the Governor
retired from office. He perceived that the days of "Ascen-
dancy" and the Protestant interest were returning, and he
went to live quietly on Staten Island, where he had a cottage
and a mill. But he was not to be allowed to escape observa-
tion in this retreat; a revolutionary government, called a
"Committee of Safety," was established in the city; Catholics
were hunted down in every direction, and orders were issued
for the arrest of Governor Dongan. He took refuge on board a
vessel in the harbour, where he remained in concealment many
weeks. In the meantime his servants were arrested and his
effects seized at his residence. The "Charter of Liberties,"
passed in 1683, under a Catholic governor, was repealed, with
all other laws passed by the late General Assembly of New
York in 1691, and a so-called "Bill of Rights" passed, which
expressly deprived Catholics of all their political and religious
rights. In 1697 this "Bill of Rights" was repealed, "pro-
bably as being too liberal," says Bishop Bayley; and in 1700,
an Act was passed which recited that "Whereas, divers
Jesuits, priests, and Popish missionaries have of late come, and
for some time have had their residence in the remote parts of
this province, and others of his Majesty's adjacent colonies,
who, by their wicked and subtle insinuations, industriously
laboured to debauch, seduce, and withdraw the Indians from
their due obedience to his most sacred Majesty, and to excite
!
86
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
and stir them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility
against his Majesty's Government;" and enacted that every
priest, etc., remaining in or coming into the province after
November 1st, 1700, should be "deemed and accounted an incen-
diary and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an
enemy of the true Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to
suffer perpetual imprisonment; " that, in case of escape and
capture, they should suffer death; and that harbourers of priests
should pay a fine of two hundred pounds, and stand three
days in the pillory.
In short, the Penal Laws of England and Ireland were care-
fully copied by the Colonists on this side the Atlantic. Even
in Maryland, whose Catholic founders had made liberty of
conscience an organic law, the same scenes of persecution
were now enacted; and it need not be said that New England
was ready to go all lengths against Papists, and against Pro-
testants, too, if they were not the right kind of Protestants.
It may not be so generally known as it ought to be how
zealously and steadily our worthy Protestant Colonists followed
the examples set them across the ocean, for the greater part of
a century. Many persons vainly suppose that the series of
Penal Laws in Ireland, with which we are all so familiar, were
invented for the sole sake of our countrymen.
Let such per-
sons read the following from the Statute Books of Virginia :—
"1753.-An Act for reducing the several laws made for
establishing the General Court, and for regulating and setting
the proceedings therein into one Act of Assembly.
"Recusant, Convict, Disabled to be a Witness.
(6 'XXIV. That Popish recusant, convicts (that is, convicted
of recusancy), shall be incapable to be witnesses in any cause
whatsoever.
-
"1756.-An Act for disarming Papists and reputed Papists
refusing to take the oaths to the Government.
"No Papist to keep Arms, etc.
"III. And for the better securing the lives and properties
of his Majesty's faithful subjects, be it further enacted and
declared, That no Papist or reputed Papist, so refusing or
making default as aforesaid, shall or may have or keep in
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
87
house or elsewhere, or in the possession of any other person to
his use, or at his disposition, any arms, weapons, gunpowder,
or ammunition, other than such necessary weapons as shall be
allowed to him, by order of the Justices of the Peace, at their
court, for the defence of his house or person.
"No Papist to keep any Horse above the Value of £5.
“VIII. And be it further enacted, That no Papist, or
reputed Papist, so refusing or making default as aforesaid, at
any time after the first day of July, in the year of our Lord
one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six, shall or may have
or keep in his own possession, or in the possession of any
other person to his use or at his disposition, any horse or
horses which shall be above the value of five pounds, to be
sold; and that any two or more Justices of the Peace, from
time to time, by warrant under their hands and seals, may
and shall authorize any person or persons, with the assistance
of the constable where the search shall be (who is hereby
required to be aiding and assisting herein), to search for and
seize for his Majesty and his successors, all such horses, which
horses are hereby declared to be forfeited to his Majesty and
his successors. The Acts of Assembly now in force in the
Colony of Virginia, Williamsburg, 1760.
66
'Negroes, mulattoes, and Indians not to be sworn as
witnesses against whites."
But Catholics could not be witnesses, even against
negroes.
But all this is a mere digression, scarcely worth dwelling
upon in this place, but that we happen to be here, in the State
of New York, which is now happily under the regime ima-
gined by the Catholic Governor Dongan; and also that the
story of this estimable Governor, coinciding, as it does, with
the efforts made for freedom by King James at home, may
help to illustrate a truth which is an ugly one to have to
admit, namely, that religious persecution is the very essence
of Protestantism. Perhaps this is natural, and all right; for
we, being the enlightened portion of Christendom, must feel
ourselves authorized, and indeed called, to make ourselves think
our thoughts, and go our way, or else "to burn them and to
boil them."
88
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
It is time to drop this offensive and irritating subject.
Nothing would be easier than to demonstrate the excessive bad
faith and malign intention which the "Historian" has brought
to the narration of the reign of King James the Second, and
the measures of his excellent Parliament. Of course the
principal witness to all the cruelties alleged to have been in-
flicted upon "the Protestants," in that reign, is Archbishop
King (State of the Protestants of Ireland). According to
his usual system, Mr Froude palms off upon his readers a bad
and discredited authority, suppressing all others. It need not
be said that the author who cited Sir John Temple, without
telling how that wretch afterwards attempted to suppress his
own book, should a little further on give us the frightful
fables of King without telling us that the man had composed
his book, after King James's fall, to help the confiscations, to
stimulate the penal laws, and to win his mitre; and without
mentioning that a worthy clergyman of King's own church,
who dwelt in Ireland and had full knowledge of passing
events, was seized with a sacred wrath on reading that bad
book of the Archbishop, and demonstrated (to use his own
words) that it contained "scarcely a true word." Such is
precisely the species of authority that Froude chooses to rely
upon; and, therefore, when his next and last volume comes
forth, his readers may expect that he will dose them with
plenty of Sir Richard Musgrave.
Perhaps I should never have undertaken to expose any of
the delinquencies of Froude, but that the excellent Father
Burke, in his most admirable course of lectures, dealt so gently
with the impostor, and even admitted his honesty and good
faith. Father Burke's lectures, as I read them now in their
collected form, appear to me a most complete answer, and
most scathing rebuke; a work, indeed, which will live while
the Irish race lives. If I have ventured to come forward into
the same field, it has been mainly with a view of exhibiting
not the honesty and good faith, but the determined dishonesty
and treachery of that pretended "Historian ;" and to show
that all this has been perpetrated with the odious intention
of affronting and scandalizing a whole race and nation. I
am not so good a Christian as Father Burke; and it gives me
pleasure to think that I may have contributed a little to
THE CRUSADE OF THE PERIOD.
89
destroy such remnant of credit as Froude had, whether at
home or abroad.
He has done evil as he could; he has sought grievously to
injure a people which has done him no wrong; and I would
now counsel him-after the example of his Cromwellian
heroes-to fall down upon his knees, and "seek the Lord,”
and wrestle nightly with the Lord, so that, peradventure, grace
might be given him to repent, and confess, and receive absolu-
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By J. T. Campion, M.D. Crown 8vo. Pictorial Enamelled Cover, price 6d.,
free by post for 7d. in stamps.
THE SUNBURST OF IRELAND RECITATION BOOK: a Selection of
Celebrated Addresses by Irish Orators and Patriots at the Bar, from the Dock,
in the Senate, and on the Battlefield. Price 6d., free by post for 7d. in stamps.
DICK MASSEY: a Tale of the Irish Evictions.
of the Irish Land Question. By T. O'Neil Russell.
Pictorial Boards, price 1s., free by post for 1s. 2d.
Strikingly Illustrative
Foolscap 8vo. Enamelled
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